I’m trying to understanding the purpose of a tapered bullnose bit and how one might go about using / setting it up in EP. I see several people on the internets using it in their carvings and it appears to be for finish or detail work, but I’m not sure. Any thoughts / insights from the hive would be greatly appreciated.
you will need to fool Easel, as of yet easel dose not recognizes a tapered ball nose cutter
Easel does not natively support ball bits of any type, and the tapered edge makes it a bit more complicated to trick easel and use it for even certain uses without getting an un-desired result.
Tapered Ball Bits are primarily used for 2 main purposes: 3d Relief carving and surface engraving of small detail designs (usually text)
Easel doesn’t generate 3d toolpaths for relief carvings, so the more likely intention for this bit is to surface engrave.
So IF you wanted to enter a Tapered Ball Nose, I would enter it as an Endmill (any of the cut types because they don’t actually effect the toolpath generation, they are only there to help the users save custom settings for various bits, but since this one will clearly be a Tapered Ball Bit, than it will have a custom name and shouldn’t be easily confused).
I would enter the Diameter of the tip (note that Diameter is 2X the Radius if you’re pulling the specs from the item listing)
And That’s it for the bit entry really.
BUUUT there’s one important caveat to this. Because of the taper and the ball tip this bit should be only used at one depth, the depth to use should be equal to the Radius of the tip.
IF you setup your design to a deeper depth, the taper will come into play and Over-Carve (remove too much material and “blow-out” the design)
IF you setup the design to a shallower depth, than the round tip will come into play and Under-Carve (remove less material and possibly make the cave not match the design)
So for the depth to be perfect you’ll want to Surface the workpiece on the CNC if possible, OR use a surfaced wateboard AND planed material.
AND this shims as a gauge process is a good practice to verify that the top is perfectly parallel to the CNC’s movement whenever surfacing on the CNC isn’t possible.
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