Cut direction Climb vs. Conventional, what's your experience

CAD/CAM Software Tips
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OK, I am new to the forum, but I tried to do my due diligence and find any previous posts about this…

I am cutting parts in both climb and conventional direction and finding some things as I would expect, the conventional cuts are producing smaller parts and the climbs larger one. I am wondering what people are finding are the other pros/cons to these cut directions. I feel more confident doing my outer profiles with climb cut as the tendency will be to fail in the waste direction… but, I may be making other things less good. (i.e. rounded over sharp corners, oblong circles.) I am interested what the community has found.

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Welcome!
I have not read discussions about this in the forum. Thanks for bringing it up.
One aspect of the Maslow that can’t be compared to horizontal cnc is, that we have issues in the down outer corners on down cuts. What I will try if I would cut on a full sheet is, to have the most left part cut clockwise, so the router moves up on the outer cut. On the right side I would choose counter clockwise, so the router moves up on the outer cut. No idea if that helps, but it’s worth a try I guess.

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This is a great question and not one I’ve seen before.

Generally, climb cutting is preferred for milling, as it produces a better surface finish. This CNC Cookbook article covers the topic pretty well:

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This makes sense, I was noticing the direction of travel relative to motor has a large impact in the lower corners. However, I am also noticing a pretty sizable offset when cutting one way versus the other. So, it seems I would have to dial in an offset to the geometry to adjust for the smaller parts when cutting conventional.

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Yeah, conventional in the lower left and climb in the lower right seems to work best. Wish there was a setting to make it do both if you get within a certain radius of the bottom corners. All in the G-code, I know…

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This sounds like it could be play in the router. Is there much wiggle in the router?

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I am having some trouble finding the sweet spot on the clamp nut on the base. I have been running it on the loose site cause I was having trouble with it failing to raise and z getting lost. I have sprayed it with graphite as a dry lube, not sure what the go to solution is.

Thanks for chiming in, Bar.

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Thanks for the link, I always try to run a climb cut when CNC’n. And the Maslow seems o work better in climb (except for the dreaded corners).

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This makes sense, I was noticing the direction of travel relative to motor has
a large impact in the lower corners.

it’s more a matter of towards and away from the motors than it is clockwise vs
counter-clockwise (one would work better on the left, the other on the right.

However, I am also noticing a pretty
sizable offset when cutting one way versus the other.

that should not be the case, can you show examples?

David Lang

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This has been my experience as well. I had one cut set up to do a final pass in the opposite direction. I’m not sure how, but somehow I made that happen with Easel. It worked really well. The backwards pass cleaned up any slight roughness.

I’m wondering if I can find a setting to do a final pass in the opposite direction with Fusion 360…