Fusion 360 CAM — Heights Tab Explained — #LarsLive 91

doing welcome to livestream number 91 today's Wednesday it is November 15 2017 thank you so much for taking the time to join today's livestream we are gonna talk today about the heights tab within cam so if you are not interested in cam then just kick back take the day off I'm just making up for last week where I was out a few days so normally I'm saying that cam is gonna be a Friday as well we're gonna have it today we're gonna have it this upcoming Friday - today's all about cam it's all about the heights and this was actually a suggestion from ban who will send me an email and asked me if I could talk about the highest tab because it can be a little confusion and it's kind of important but I honestly believe and you be the judge you let me know thumbs up thumbs down like you know if I do a decent job after today you should be all set with the heist app you'll be the judge you let me know so if you go around watching the recording in the description area you will find my email address livestock Christensen and autodesk.com that's where Ben sent the request for today's video so you know do that if you have anything you would like to see also and I'm gonna jump into it now but also just quickly want to say that tonight it's Wednesday it is November 15th tonight about 10 after 8:00 all around right right right after 8 o'clock 5 10 minutes past 8 I am gonna do a live scene on Facebook we got a call that like the answer bar or something like that a little bit more kick back gonna do it on Facebook so if you have a Facebook account go ahead and find search my name fusion 360 yes you come up it's gonna be mall for beginners it's not gonna be you know high level I actually take the time to try to answer some questions as we as I'm going back and forth so if you are already a CAD ninja you know Facebook live streams on Wednesday evenings is probably not for you but if you like I think many of us sometimes we do unsecured about what is X is the right approach that's tonight 8:00 p.m. Eastern that's the same time in New York City okay done with me rambling let's go ahead and talk about the height set because somebody is watching this video just oh thank you so much guys so um I had this model year and I just kind of like marveled this off there's nothing too fancy about this we got a couple of pockets we got kind of like this cylinder shape down here and we got some holes what I wanted to do was I really I really hate when you know it turns into when it turns into it so kind of like a cooking show where everything I've already been prepared so exci waters are going into a cam and and stop from scratch and throw some toolpath on this one so if you've never seen can befall well you can kind of like see the process here we're gonna talk about the heights AB and what the heights AB is it's kind of like the distance the tools are moving between pockets or holes or something like that so pretty important and I'm gonna show what I think are some pretty needs tips with that so let's get going so the first thing you're doing cam is you hit set up you're creating a set up normally I always use only the select Zee explain I don't use any of the other ones I've talked about this in the past so I'm not going to deep dive too deep into this I'm just gonna select the top of the part here now there is a couple of things that's going to be important when we are talking about the heights so we're talking about the tool moving around on this part and we got to dive pretty far into this because one of them is where are we picking up the pot so we're doing that with electing known like a box point if you're selecting start box point then you need to know that you're selecting whatever you have in your stock options fold the top off sets so you know normally you're leaving a little bit of material on top now you got to decide when you're touching the tool love if you're touching that on top of the part or if you are gonna subtract whatever like let's see there was no material left on the top then you would not have it you could make this zero the stock top offset or you could go in here instead of do a stock box part you could select model box point and select a point so that's just one of the things to keep in mind we're gonna see this happening as we're going through and talk a little bit deeper about this right now I'm going to leave it on stock point what it means that there is a millimeter of star on top our pot here right okay to that and let me just apply some tool path now normally when we apply to a path to a pot like this we might start out with a facing operation so I'm gonna click on that one I'm gonna go ahead and select a tool and when I'm creating these tools right now a bear with me I'm not gonna go in to all the different settings but I just wanted to do it from scratch so I'm gonna select the 50 millimeters endmill I'm gonna select all the tools all the operations and then we're gonna go back into the height set so selecting the tool that's always the first half right because I'm just facing off this blog I actually don't have to select it in geometry okay and I now have a facing operation in here that you now are aware of now if I go back in and edit that operation yes we have the Heights app over here so this is the one we're gonna we're going to be talking about in a few minutes here I'm just going to add a couple of more operations so we're faced off the part maybe we also want to rough out these two pockets we could go in and use a - the adaptive clearing for that again I'm gonna go over and select a new tool for here because we don't want to use a face in the middle for that I'm gonna go now I'm selecting the out of this tutorial metric library here so at the 16 millimeter and then I'm gonna go over on the geometry tab and select the two in our circles here now again here you will also see that is the Heights tab again that's the one we're gonna we're gonna talk about now the reason that I'm selecting multiple operations because the height tabs kind of dust different things depending on what operation you're in so there is our two pockets roughed up now when we have rough those up we might want to finish them normally going to use a 2d contour for that we might select the smaller tool for that right now I'm just going to leave it at the 16 and go in and select those two same diameters that will give us a finishing operation for that I might also want to take a pass around the outside so I could use that little trick by going over right click and say create derived operation and go into 2d milling and find that same contour tool path that means that all my my settings if I had customized anything in the different tabs gets carried over the only thing I have to do is deselect the two chains and selected outside so if you didn't know about that little trick I am also gonna go in and do three X's to a path on this part because height steps is still important when it comes to free exit to a path so I makes it gonna rough out this little oval pocket right here just bear with me here I want to say good with smaller ml for that because it's a pretty small pocket so going here I'll select the 10 millimeter flat end mil for that now I have done the live stream on selection within when it comes to machining geometry on three axis so if this is fairly new to you I would men that you check out that livestream it's gonna go ahead and say our machine the cavities and probably also leave some stuff to leave here and that will rough out this pocket then we're gonna finish it for that I'm gonna use the parallel cuts again I've created videos on some of this free access to a path if it's this brand new for you but I just want to you know make sure that when we're done with this live-streaming you know twenty minutes or so that you have a full tank feel comfortable with with the heist and it's almost like the six millimeter ball on a little bit smaller than the ten millimeter we just used before again going to the geometry in here I'm gonna do a also select the selection to select that boundary I am always I like to use this contact point boundary for that that's it okay that looks somewhat decent decent down there that's the toolpath maybe if your machine doesn't realize your program well you would have a lot smaller step over all right so wrap this up I'm just gonna do a drilling then I've how I've been through I would say most of the standard tool path there is and we can then stop talking about this height span here that I'm trying to get it I'm lazy so like same diameter click on that there and then it will drill these holes okay so we created a handful of different operations in here and when we're talking about the Heights AB we're talking about if I click on the facing tool we're talking about how the tool is going to approach the part our machine the part and then how it's going to kind of like leave the part again to go to the next tool path or in this case is the adaptive and it will enter the part but then the interesting thing comes when we start talking about it's got to make this jump across to the second pocket and that's where I think that many times people get a little bit confused when it comes to when it - - treating treating things in here so I hope that this was not too long a setup from - getting to the point but let's go in and kind of like that guess the different types of toolpath and start shrieking them and talk about the heist and so the reason that I didn't just do a facing operation is because if I right-click and hit edit on the facing operation and I go over to the Heights tab you will see that there's actually five different categories in here but if I go to the - the adaptive and hit edit and hide set you'll see this only fall it's kind of funny I think that most most machines will tell me that facing operations would be a lot simpler than the - the adaptive but behind said actually not so so much so here is the trick when it comes to to the heights app I always tell any training classes that I doing can start from the top and just work your way through the different menus so when you're getting it's a tool select your tool choose your cooling make sure your feet the speeds all right go entry is selection make sure you got selected now when it comes to the Heights tab I actually recommend you're going from the bottom and up okay stop from the bottom and work your way up the reason for that is that if you ever ever programmed the CNC machine the bottom is normally like your first concern how deep is this end no drill or whatever tool exit going down to you know burst of those level it goes and then if you start with that then you can kind of work your way up so in here you will see that by default the bottom depth right now is set for a model top now if I hover over it I get this cheesecake factory of a menu that shows up here showing you all the four kinds of things cup of coffee read through this it's good information and definitely a lot of helpful now what happens when I click on the drop down is you will see that I can choose where that bottom I'm gonna figure out something about that bottom hide where that is so by default here for this facing operation it sets your model top what means that when our tool is approaching the part it's not gonna machine any deeper then the model top but it's good right like that's kind of like you know we can breathe sudden relief because of a face going down to the bottom of it that would be obvious so so that is where you can look at that now we're going to look at the 2d adaptive that goes down to these two pockets if we right click and select edit there and go to the heights tab go down at the bottom you will see the dad bottom height is from the selected contours what the selected contours are if I go back to the Joneses have those two edges that I selected at the bottom of the pocket what means that right now then adaptive looks pretty good at writing machines all the way down to through the bottom of this pocket now if I go in and I change the change so it was like the bottom I select the top and I hit OK see what happens now it will not go any further down than that selected edge that I have selected because on the height set it's set to the selected contours meaning the contours that I selected right now you have different options in here yeah I could go in here and say I X instead of doing selected contours I am going to hit sell election my head selection is looking for somewhere what is that selection and I could actually now select the bottom of those two pockets and hit OK and now it will be back to to where I wanted okay so that's how this kind of works in here now I could also go in here and say for example model mod bottom and so like that and now you will see that it's going to go all the way I mean that's gonna not be good because now it actually goes all the way down to the bottom here okay so concentrate the first thing we should always do is concentrate on that bottom height that's the first one and just make sure that that has the right height if that is good that is the most important thing now anybody ever played with Legos that is kind of like how this works so after the bottom height we go one up and look at that now that one on top of that is set to what is the top height kind of telling us where is the 0 Z 0 for our tool now right now it is set to stock top okay so stop top well that would be if we go into our setup where we work with fall that would be that one millimeter that is the stock top that is on top of the part okay now if so so we have now eliminated these two so this is top height now the next one is reach fact height this is when it moved from one pocket to the other pocket what is the height it should be at when it's traveling from one part to the other that is stopped top what we just defined what's the same one we had a top height right that is one millimeter above plus five millimeters so actually a total of six millimeters right because we had front from the top of this of the model because we had one millimeter the start and that you're going five millimeters above that so we should actually clear this area here with with six millimeters because this is after the facing operation and then when we go to the clearance height now clearance height is when the tool approaches from the beginning like when you hit the green cycle start button and it's going to approach this operation when it's approaching the adaptive operation it's gonna do it well that's right and the clearance height is the reach right height what was is this here and that was six millimeters above the model top of five minutes about the start top so is that we tracked height plus an additional ten millimeters I hope that this makes sense just thinking out a saying we're gonna repeat this right but a petition is key in all learning so just two leaky repeat they start with the bottom height make sure your collar goes to the depth you want then the next of these kind of like build upon each other kind of like going up okay now I'm gonna show you a pretty neat tip so kind of like maybe we can talk a little bit about this so follow this operation I'm just gonna hit okay for this adaptive let it process it here's a neat tool you maybe don't know about if you right-click on an operation there's a a command called view tool path click on that and we actually get this really now this is not the posted curve but it's a reference code for for our our pot and what you will see is that there is an X X Y Z X Y Z and so on for this this whole thing and it shows us kind of like going through the entire the entire cut and if you click here you would like to see that the tool will follow along so this is a great way if you are secure your programming something you know this is a good way to to kind of like work your way your way through this right now this one here is a little bit interesting because it does have the helix on it right you're doing a helix ramp for this adaptive and not to try to make it more confusing but the helix is excellent if I going to add this to a pen it's controlled on the linking tab over here right and that actually has a vertical lead-in lead-out radius on top of that okay so what happens is that when it comes to the top height then it's going to add this 1.6 vertical lead-in to the top and that's where the cuts going to stop so maybe this is not the best one to look at maybe we should look at let's look at this one and stat the contour just because the helix might make it a little bit more confusing so that's going to look at the contour here edit this one go back in and look at the heights tab right so this one here actually has an extra one it has a feed height on it so again don't worry about it's not at the bottom what is the Select the contour in this case it is again selected contour so what wants to select the contour that was what I selected down at the bottom of the pocket so no panic there we got that then it's asking okay what is the top height again it's set to the stock top okay and the stock top comes out of ourselves like I said before what do we have here versus you know with with that number set right there okay so that is is the stock top here then we have a feed height now the feed height is set to the height that is this one so it's the top right plus an additional five millimeters so stock top plus and another five millimeters that's when it's going to stop feeding it's going to go into a feed rate mode so it's going to go from a bracket to a feet rate we have again the retract height going from one part to the other pocket but it's also stock top plus five so these two actually makes it the same right because the top hide the stock top plus five and up here reach right height is top top plus five I mean you could go in here and you could change this to top height and that would be kind of the same thing and then on top of that we have the clearance height so the rabbit for the beginning of the operation what is the top height plus five plus and other additional ten so they're building on top of each other does this make sense they're like I hope this makes sense start with the bottom and then they kinda like building up on each other okay I'm sorry if this is if I'm making it I'm not meaning to make it more confusing than this so to go back to where we were before with the the linking tab with the lead-in you will see here we have this vertical lead-in radius and we could change that so maybe let's just do it too so some number we can kind of like see in the code and if we now go and right-click and do that tool path compare and we look at this we will see that the first one is 15 millimeter Rabbid so the tool will come from the tool change position it will go to 15 rabbit it will go down oops I'm moving my mouse down that was not good let's go ahead so we can kind of maybe see a little bit better so the first one is 15 rabbit then is going to go to 5 rad above okay then it's gonna plunge down to one inch so this is kind of like our start feeding point and then it's going to go down to that to vertical that I changed on the linking tab and then go down to sixteen is to finish that okay and then it's gonna stop machining around this pot when it gets to the point where it's gonna lead out it will go to up because that was a vertical lead on the linking it will wrap it up five now I can't spin it around with this menu open but this five here is that top height it's the top height or the stock chop plus five right and then it will do another move over that so in the way that was our our retract height is this move here you to a path so that is our it's going up this is our retrack move then it's gonna go down one down two millimeters above the radius and then down to the depth that's kind of like how that works and it's really the same like if we're going to look so I added a free be adaptive because I wanted to show you that if you go in and look at the 3d adaptive but roughed out that cone shape here you will see it's the exact same kind of idea except this one by default go to model bottom but because it's a free access tool path so 3d tool path it is not controlled by a selection it's extra controlled by where there is material so it knows in this case I can't I can't cut into material that's one of the great things about three exes toolpath and you find up here is that it will not doubt into to the material but you could use this so for example set a selection okay so I could go in here and say well I only wanted to machine to maybe and you can select an advert to see right here and I could select that point and now of course it can't machine and deeper than that point we'll just do kind of like a flat versus if I tell you go as thee as you want in this case is always such a model bottom because it cannot bounce into the material you will now see that it's gonna go all the way kind of like down to the bottom but everything else within the 3d tool pad even though this is a model bottom but everything else in here works the exact same way they're built on top of one another now before I go to the drilling well let's do the drilling and then I go by one step back because they made all but in half an hour to the drilling is going to add at that one height stab we get a couple of mo options down here now it's said to hold bottom and be aware of we're drilling be aware of that the top height is nobody set to whole top so if you had a countable or for example you know there was an extra step down here and you selected the smaller diameter be aware that the whole top will be at the top of that smaller hole let's go created a counter bore so you might have to go in here is this a hole top maybe select model top for example in this case it's gonna be the same that's one thing to be aware of with holes also but but these up here are exactly the same as we just talked about the other one they built on top of these here now you also get an option here to drill chip through the bottom or just really handy that and now you could add a little bit of breakthrough because normally if you have like a job or drill it has 118 degrees angle here so you could go in and say I like to go 5 millimeters but 5 millimeters offset I want to go 5 millimeters break through here and you will see that now I make sure that my drill goes past the drill tip of course make sure you don't really insert anything like a table or something like that so caution so so that is what we have with drilling now the other thing I wanted to show you that you may be another aware of if you go into the tool path that I'm created here by machined around it you can actually do something a little bit maybe more advanced or at least I don't know you should be aware of some of these functions inside of fusion you can actually go in and you can create kind of rules in well in any field that has kind like these fields in him you can actually make expressions and I to me this is like it gets a little geeky and definitely not something you have to learn to be able to use fusion but if I right-click in here in one of these white areas you get a couple of options first of all you can make any of these fields default but it's super good if you know that every time you use start to leave you don't like to have 0.1 millimeters you sick and tired of always changing this to one millimeter like this well you can just throw in the end right click and say make this default and from now on any times I do a 2d contour and I click stop to leave it would always do one millimeter instead of point one millimeter that is super helpful and if you change your mind you can always right-click in there again and say reset - to default in there and it will go back we said so building beef default but it's kind of like you know the how fusion came and it will switch back to that that's one thing the other thing that is in the end is there something called expressions you can click here and you exit get a feel up here if we go into the adaptive I'm gonna wrap this up in just a second but if we go into adaptive many people asked me about this optimal load and I did that live stream on adaptive clearing so if this is something you want to know more about search the live streams or sent me an email and I'll send you a link to it if I right click in here and set edit expression you will actually see that this optimal load actually has kinda like a formula to it to diameter times point four so this optimal load will change by default the tool diameter times point four now you can change this if you find out on your machine that point three would be better then you can change that and you can now make that the default and then you're all set we can actually also use it on the height set but could be kind of interesting if I go in this tool here right now and I change this tool this is this sixteenth flat in mill but if I change that to Arabia's cover so right now is a flat end mill if I change that to a bull nose and middle of radius code or whatever you want and we're gonna add a corner radius in here for for example three so now I've got a three meter radius down here now if I go in and say okay to that and let it process it are creating it around this pot here well if you have done in a machining you know that with this depth here that that is you know we will have that little radius there just so you know you could actually go in here hit edit and you could go into your Heights tab and I won't again if you're doing this all that's if this is a problem you're running into all the time right click in here edit expression right and I could go in here it's thinking about it I think there we go I could go in here and I could change this to an expression now I don't have the list for expressions I know somebody created at one point but if I go in here and I type in - tool underscore we need to know what these are of course three yes okay if I gotta type that that means that now it will always go - but that corner radius is on whatever tool I select in our case three millimeters so now when I hit okay you will now see that the depth is gonna be you know three millimeters deeper to make sure I don't get that radius don't affect that bottom to prove that we actually did it right let's go back in and change the tool again and let's make it really exciting but for it is and let's go in here and regenerate that edit it and now you will see that it automatically changed it to fall I hope this is not you know this would be great here but of course I'm using the same tool on finishing these pockets but when right now it looks good but when I regenerate this they are gonna go too deep - oh no they were loud oh because I didn't make it default right I didn't make it a default in the other one I just I just put it in for contour so if I wanted that to stick all the time I would now have to plug in here and say make it default and then whenever I select it or regenerate it then it will will be in there I don't want a default I'm gonna go ahead and say reset to build but I hope that that kind of makes sense so a little bit more advanced in the end hopefully not too confusing - to wrap it up just start from the bottom make sure that one is good that should pretty self-explanatory where those numbers come from just work your way up if there is any confusion right click select mutual path and you can actually click through each step and see that cutter machine around you got the Z value over here and don't forget that it depends these numbers in here in these C values in here are deriving from the set up so in our case here we had set the cero cero to be on top that one millimeter on top of the stock what is what we had over here okay I hope that this was I hope this was just useful you let me know thumbs up if it is thumbs down if it's not hope the intro was not too long but again Wednesday night little after a we will sit down and we'll do some some modeling for beginners on Facebook that was what I was yapping about in the beginning if you came a little bit late so tonight a little bit after 8 p.m. Eastern for beginners and it's gonna be kind of very casual if you have any questions I will answer them transit them live again keeping it all beginner mode just to kind of like help people I mean try to add some more value I am going to end it right here thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to watch this as usual I'm gonna end up recording so if you're watching the recording of this thank you so much we really appreciate it and I'm gonna shove it to the last unit say I do all the wonderful people in there take care guys

Channel: Lars Christensen

Views: 33,242

Keywords: Autodesk, Autodesk Fusion 360, Fusion 360, 3D, 3D Printing, CAM, Tip, Beginner, Lars Christensen, akn_include, Manufacturing, CNC

Id: ISerhQ4J9Kc

Length: 37min 3sec (2223 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017