CamBam - Extending Pockets?

[mjohn]

Sorry if this is a simple issue or I'm using the wrong names for things as I'm still learning the lingo, but I've been mulling over this problem for about a week and a half and I think I need to throw in the towel and ask for help. Below is my part in CamBam...



Pictured is the top and right of basically a picture frame style design. Profile 1 and 2 completely cut out the part and will get tabs before the final cut. My problems come where Pockets 1, 2 and 4 come into play. See the hand-drawn red curves. As is, Pocket 1 will leave a triangle on the top right of the Pocket area. Pocket 4 will leave a curve on the bottom right of the pocket area and Pocket 2 will skip the far right area completely.

I know I can make some major adjustments in Sketchup and make some groups and lines that will fool CamBam into cutting past the Profile. I can also draw a Rectangle where I see problem areas in CamBam and add a pocket to those, but I can't help thinking there's an easier way. Plus I really want smooth cuts, not the equivalent of Pocket 1 and then another rectangle to chop off the left-over area.

Is there an easy way to do this? I looked for a way to delete areas of my piece after exploding and drawing in new boundaries with limited success. Can I tell CamBam to over-shoot Pocket 1 and 2 on the Y-Axis by another few mm? Pocket 4 down by another half the radius of my mill bit?

Thanks for your help!
-John

[levlandau2]

Try using corner overcut. This will cut the areas you have highlighted but will remove more material than you wanted. Using a smaller endmill will help, but I am not aware of a way to cut a perfect corner with a round cutter..

[mjohn]

Thanks Lev, looks like Corner Overcut would be perfect if I could specify which corner to give a little extra cutting to.. Unfortunately it's only for Profile cuts as well.

The round corners don't worry me, I chisel them away when necessary, it's just the areas that are just not hit at all. I ran a sample tonight, made a group for each and every machining operation in CamBam and for the areas that I would have had a problem I just resized the Polyline by the diameter of my bit and moved the polyline back to it's original position. This gave me just enough on each side to cleanly cut - even though some of it was cutting in air, it worked perfectly.

So it seems like that's the way to go for now, a little extra work. Maybe a future version of CamBam will let me stretch pocket paths.

Try using corner overcut. This will cut the areas you have highlighted but will remove more material than you wanted. Using a smaller endmill will help, but I am not aware of a way to cut a perfect corner with a round cutter..

[levlandau2]

I still think you can do it with the corner rounding. You can select the shape you are doing a pocket on and do a profile on it as well, which would enable corner rounding.

[edwardrford]

Lev is correct, you could run an additional profile operation on that pocket shape to achieve your goal. The profile op would be "inside" the line, in this case.

-Edward

[mjohn]

Thanks guys, I've been playing with the overcut and it's just not giving me what I was hoping for.

Instead I've learned that if I properly group objects in Sketchup they'll retain the groupings in CamBam. This allows me to join and resize each area I need to extend. I can also just draw a new rectangle over the area I need to extend and have gotten pretty good at the software's idiosyncrasies when it comes to moving and snapping.

[levlandau2]

Yup, that sounds about right. I have experienced the same where it usually takes a couple of iterations to get things right. Typically the CAD work takes quite a bit of time.