Hi Eddy and Kvom
Dave, it's good to have comments of any kind
Ha Ha I recall a quote from a fading Hollywood movie star (can't remember who it was now ) that went something like, The only thing worse than being “talked about “ was “not being talked about”.
Unlike a few of the other plugins that I've written, which I did for a bit of fun and to learn something new, this plugin was borne of a genuine need.
As in descending order I work with Steel/Aluminium/Eng plastics and have to break the edges
as a matter of routine, sometimes for aesthetics but mostly for safety.
I'm not sure if your ambition was to do much more than what you've done already.
It wasn't really, as I cut out parts of various sizes from 1.5 mm to 16 mm thick al on a per job basis, a one size fits all chamfer wasn't appropriate and calculating the chamfers for each individual part on the sheet gets old quickly.
The latest version does cut a bit further up the tool as a bit of testing on the machine showed that
the very bottom of the tool tip left another edge to break, and also the surface speed at the tip of the tool is very low and the finish wasn't very good, and as I don't have a high speed spindle I couldn't do much about this.
To address this I have added a small offset (negative roughing clearance) and added a bit to the tool depth of the tool path, but there are some constraints here depending on the geometry of the tool.
For example my 90 Deg countersink is a large tool both in depth and width, and so I can cut further up the flank of the tool (I did this in the last version) and there was a remarkable improvement in finish, however with the 60 and 30 deg cutters you are somewhat constrained by the geometry of the tool itself.
As to multiple passes, the plugin produces a standard profile mop with the Tool Dia, Roughing Clearance and Depth of Cut fields calculated and filled in, and so anything else (like leadin's for example) can be set as you need. I always use the spiral leadin as a matter of course.
I could set the spiral leadin when the mop is generated, but because our machines and materials are different there might not be a one size fits all "Depth Increment" that I could use for the spiral leadin's.
But I'm not a machinist by trade and am happy to take advice on this.
Dave