It may sometimes be necessary to perform cutout or notch machining differently on two machines. As an example, perhaps your company operates a nested router and a vertical single parts machine, and you are cutting toe kick parts. Depending on its age and condition, the nesting machine may be able to cut the borders of a cutout or notch while leaving the center without creating a safety hazard from the small loose part. Doing the same thing on a vertical machining center could cause an issue if the cutout piece drops into the roller mechanism and causes a jam in the machine.
To prevent this, some users do not machine normal cutouts that create the small waste piece, but instead pocket that cutout, turning it to sawdust.
On the other hand, pocketing the cutouts on a nested router may be an inefficient use of machine time if not necessary for safety reasons.
How do you account for both scenarios if you have one of each of the two types of machines and want to send G-Code to both machines all the time? For our recommendation, see the general procedure below, as well as the Tutorial contained at the link at the end of this article.
This procedure focuses on a toe kick notch but would work similarly for any pocketed cutout.
The basic procedure is found below.
Add a CORNERNOTCH token and parameters for each part affected. One set should use the default routing tool or non-pocketing tool that will cut the notch (e.g., nesting machine). The other set of tokens should use the default pocketing tool (e.g., vertical machining center).
Turn OFF “Pocket Corner Notch Token” at Options > Machining.
Set the “Pocketing Router” tool in the vertical machining center toolfile that you intend the machine to use when doing a pocketing cutout. Set another tool in the same toolfile with that “Pocketing Router” box checked OFF for the tool to use when doing the non-pocketing cutout.
Verify that none of the tools are pocketing routers in the nesting machine toolfile.
Verify that the tool specified for the cutout notch machining on the nesting machine is set as ‘draw only’ in the spreadsheet toolfile interface column V. Don’t worry if the nest appears to contain pocket routing. If everything has been done correctly, the G-Code produced for that machine will not contain pocket routing.
If the tool you specify as the draw-only tool is used for other machining besides the means of displaying the cutout in the drawing, copy that tool, change the Common Tool Name to something that indicates it is used only as a draw-only tool for pocketing.
Click here for a Tutorial of the general procedure above to configure your library data and toolfiles for this functionality.