Cutter compensation in PathPilot

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01 May 2024 16:20 #299472 by BruceCharlesDesigns
Okay, working my way through this.  It appears there may be an update with the version of PathPilot to release with the 1500MX, but for now pathpilot tool table has a tool diameter and length value.  IT would appear that to use cutter wear compensation that the diameter value needs to be the wear value instead of the diameter of the tool.  I know I can use "in control" instead of "wear" from my cam package, but have a handful of reasons to prefer "wear".

In any case, if I'm entering values such as -.005 into the diameter value and programming the toolpath in Fusion 360 to use "wear" as cutter compensation, is the value treated as a wear off the diameter of the tool or the radius?

I've looked at the linuxcnc docs a bit, but there is a bunch of switching back and forth between diameter and radius in the sections that describe that and It's not easy to tell exactly which it is.

I have some other mills with chinese controls, all of which use radius.  (Side not, the radius is referred to as "D" in the docs.  Brilliant.)

Any help in this area would be appreciated.

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01 May 2024 19:10 #299501 by BruceCharlesDesigns
Gonna reply to myself in case someone looks for this in the future. I just ran a test piece and measured the size with and without cutter compensation. On an outside contour, setting the tool diameter to -.3mm resulted in a an outside contour that was .3mm smaller across, so the -.3mm must be cutter diameter. Makes sense.

Some of my confusion came from the docs here where there are changes between radius and diameter sentence by sentence.

linuxcnc.org/docs/html/gcode/tool-compensation.html

"4. Cutter Radius Compensation
Cutter Compensation allows the programmer to program the tool path without knowing the exact tool diameter. The only caveat is the programmer must program the lead in move to be at least as long as the largest tool radius that might be used."

For PathPilot at least, it appears to be diameter. :)
The following user(s) said Thank You: tommylight

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