Errors

Within Fusion 360 CAM there are a few different warnings and errors you may receive when simulating your tool paths. The most common ones to look out for are the different types of collisions (Rapid Collision with stock, Collision Stock+holder, Collision Stock+shaft, etc.). Fusion will try its best to notify you when simulating your tool path if these issues are present, however, it does not always do this and it is important to know what to look out for when simulating your tool paths.

Fusion Thrown Errors

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In the above image, the stock+holder collision occurs because the tool selected is not long enough to reach the feature which will cause the tool holder to collide with the stock material when running the part within the machine. To solve this we need to use a longer tool to provide a reasonable amount of clearance between the tool holder and the stock material when running the part.

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The stock+shaft collision is typically thrown when the tool is trying to cut beyond the effective cutting length of the tool. A common solution for this error is to enable multiple depths. This enables us to cut using the effective cutting length to remove material and prevents the stock material from making contact with the shaft of the tool. Another solution is to use a tool with a longer effective cutting length.

Red Flags

While Fusion does its best to notify you of toolpaths that may be problematic it is not perfect. The following discusses red flags that may be present within fusion 360 simulations.

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The above image is of a 2D contour operation which is used as a finishing contour to clean up the outer perimeter of the part. In this tool path, the endmill plunges downwards at an entry point and then traces the tool path. This is problematic because endmills are not designed for plunge cutting, and running the tool path on a machine can cause the tool to break or damage the machine. The way to correct this tool path would be to enable lead-ins and lead-outs.

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The corrected tool path is shown above. By enabling lead-ins and lead-outs for this type of contour the tool moves to the correct depth outside of the stock material and then leads the endmill toward the stock material and then traces the perimeter to remove the remainder of the material. This prevents the end mill from plunging into the stock material and allows us to use the effective cutting region of the end mill.

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The above image regards another issue with 2D contour. In the above image, the endmill plunges and traces the perimeter before abruptly exiting the stock material. The first issue is that cutting at that depth is way too aggressive for an end mill and we need to enable multiple depths.

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However, even if we enable multiple depths the endmill still tries to plunge cut into the material which it is not designed to do. To fix this we need to enable ramping and disable lead-ins and lead-outs to prevent from having the endmill from abruptly exiting.

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Even though we enabled ramping we need to change the maximum ramp step down to be the height of the contour. without changing this setting this will cause unnecessary traverses in the tool path which can cause excessive machining times.

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The above image is of the corrected tool path