Controlling Retracts in Volume Milling
In Volume milling, you can minimize overall cutting time by minimizing the height of the tool retract at the end of a cut before traversing to the start of the new cut.
There are two ways of controlling the retract height:
• Specifying an intermediate retract plane, called the traverse plane, by using the Retract Selection dialog box. If you specify a traverse plane, the tool uses this plane to traverse between cuts while machining a volume. At the end of the NC sequence, the tool retracts all the way back to the retract plane.
The traverse plane must be normal to the z-axis of the NC sequence coordinate system. Unlike the retract plane, the traverse plane setting is not modal. You have to explicitly specify a traverse plane for each NC
• Setting the RETRACT_OPTION parameter to SMART. For each intermediate retract within the NC sequence, the system calculates a minimal safe level for the tool to traverse to the new position. This safe level is determined as the level of the lowest slice with no obstructions on the way of the tool, plus the PULLOUT_DIST value, if specified. At the end of the NC sequence, the tool retracts all the way back to the retract plane.