3d adaptive for initial clearing 1/4" EM then parallel with an 1/4 " ball mill. Can smooth the transition by adding tangential extentions and avoiding touch surfaces

There are a few things you can do to make this process faster, easier and better looking. First, rather than a ball mill, use a toroidial cutter if you can. They provide a much better surface finish and faster rate of material removal. The buttons on the cutter can be rotated as they wear which is a plus. A bull nose end mill with large corner radius can get a similar effect. You can get some effects with ball mills that you cannot with torroidals though.

Fantastic video! I really enjoy your videos and learn a ton. And then see a video on knife making! As a man who earns a living from making knives this had me jacked! Fantastic explanation and even though my milling machine (and lathe) are fully manual, I want to learn the CAM theory regardless if I ever use it or not. I appreciate the work you put into these videos and you sharing your knowledge. Thank you!

This was awesome. I got into cad/cam (no mill/cnc yet) about a week ago. I'm a knife maker and jeweler, and I wanted to use cnc to assist in the knife roughing stages. I've been binge watching your videos for a few days now, and a knife blade was my first project I made in fusion, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to do exactly this. This answers a lot of my questions... so thank you. Love your channel, keep it up.

The scallop tool path in my experience always does a spiral to the center of your boundary, I think the problem was that you were on a surface that had a single slope to it and was attempting to apply that spiral to that slope. One thing I would recommend trying is the avoid/touch option under the geometry tab as I've had a lot of luck using it to restrict the tool path to only the surfaces I want it to touch. I believe that the optimal tool path for this job would be the parallel strategy since you only have what I usually refer to as "organic" geometry in one direction.

hey John I use 3d contour..weather I'm leaving cusps or milling smooth..and when selecting geometry I choose MODEL tab. I find it better for me to do it all in one operation. I was doing a adaptive to remove a bulk of the material. then a contour...but it's easier and faster to do it in one OP... unless of course your stock is very thick....I'm still a newbie. but this works for me..

Totally agree at the end about fusion being a great learning tool for a beginner cam machinist... to be able to tweak a toolpath and simulate it is powerful considering what had to be done a few decades ago to get a design to reality. great vid!

Scallop will always produce a spiral-like path for me. I use parallel for my blades as you did

Thank you John for your time and videos! I love how the shop keeps growing too.

Always great comment contribution to go along with these educational videos. I sometimes come back a couple of days later to see what ideas might have been missed.

You can change where the paralell pass begins by setting the pass angle to 180 from whatever it is.

I was playing with my first knife project this morning. I had the best luck with Contour. It gave me a much cleaner path than parallel or ramp. Thanks for the video!

3d contour is is the best ive found for knife bevel geometries because it follows the contour to give you smooth tool paths and will provide less tool pressure differences creating minute marks on your part like the parallel strategy would give you because the parallel will move in a straight line at the specified angle and stepover.

I use Gibbs cam and im always experimenting with new toolpath features. It's fun and i learn a tonne. Ive tried hsm express and i find all the menus and options handy but confusing due to all the navigation

You could do a ruffing parallel cut in the Y axis with a endmill to ruff it out then clean up with a parallel cut in x.

John. Been watching your videos since you were in New York City. Great channel mate! Now you have a 4th axis, you can use a face mill off tram to the cut to produce a concaved cut allong the length of the blade.You would have one side of the knife done in 2 roughing passes and 1 finninshing pass. Keep up the great work. Chich2 from Down Under.

awsome always learning

I'm always interested in knife related material. Thanks.

Great Video. I was just doing something like this, with "make stock from a part" and then machining parts off of the stock for a customer who wanted a store bought tool altered. The tool paths were hard to figure out. Could you post your ideas of how you would hold this blank in the CNC Mill. That was the next challenge for me, cause the existing tool was not flat! Thanks.

Can you configure the parallel to go parallel along the vertical axis instead of one of the horizontal axis like you did? I think it would produce nice cuts that follow the shape of the blade.