tool paths sugestions: F360 / ALU / Ball End

On my phone at the moment, so can’t open your file. I’ll have a proper look tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you skip through this video of finishing some aluminium parts with a ball end mill, I’ve put the various tool paths and parameters on the screen for each stage.

 

OK, so this is the component:



To perhaps state the obvious: I don't consider the ball-end mill as a stock removal tool, so the part needs to be roughed out before using the ball-end mill to finish.

I think the strategy / paths that I used in that video would be broadly OK:

3D Adaptive Clearing using the flat end mill, leaving a small amount of stock on all faces;
A Flat toolpath with the flat end mill to clean up the horizontal faces and the two vertical ones with the hole in - you might want to eliminate the R1.5 fillet between the vertical and horizontal faces to simplify this. (If not, you'll need a <3mm dia ball end mill to finish it.)
A combination Scallop and 3D Contour tool paths with the ball-end mill for the curved surface. Scallop works better for a shallow slope, 3D Contour for steeper slopes. You may get away with using one for everything, but IME F360 struggled with something similar (I used Scallop 0-60° slope and Contour 55-90° slope - YMMV).

Maybe not so obvious, is that the tip of the ball end mill needs to be able to be able to travel further down in Z than the surface it's finishing:



So your initial clearing operation needs to extend below the height of the horizontal surfaces. FWIW, I would extend the first operation as far down as possible, to leave the minimum thickness that you need for holding. (How are you planning to hold the stock?)

The 'production' way of freeing the parts from the stock would be to turn the whole thing over, hold it in soft jaws and machine away the bottom surface.
The 'hobbyist' way would be to secure the parts somehow and machine down into a spoil board. If you had a smaller flat cutter (<~5mm) you could bore the holes and use them for additional holding after the flat surfaces have been finished.

FWIW, I think I'd use a 2D contour with the flat end mill to finish the outline of the part, and then continue to ramp down to cut through the remaining stock. This is effectively slot cutting, which is relatively slow, but gives a better finish than an adaptive toolpath would. NB the parts need to be well secured for this.

You would still need to make the horizontal hole somehow.

HTH - I'd be interested to know how you get on.

 

I just realised that you've had a go at setting something up:

i) Use 3D Adaptive Clearing to rough out, not 2D - this will need to extend below the flat faces as per my previous post.
ii) If you want to machine all 4 parts in the same setup, you either need to select them all in the setup, or don't select anything and F360 will automatically include everything. Your stock size will then make sense and F360 won't try and machine through the other parts.
iii) *I* would try and minimise the depth of the final 2D contour path by clearing as much material as possible in OP1.