Working on the rocket project again and ran the first operation today!
I'm honestly a little shocked by how well the new programming techniques I picked up over the past few days worked! Everything was swift and efficient, with amazing surface finish results!
I'm really pleased with the surface finish on the rocket's fins and took full advantage of the radial toolpath to get an exploding star-like pattern. The downside to using this toolpath is that as the lines get farther from the center, the stepovers get increasingly larger, so you can see the thrusters' bottom got clear cusps.
I picked up an interesting technique today while engraving some lettering on the part I'm working on. I couldn't use an engraving bit due to the sharp nature of the centerline that wouldn't look right on this piece. I was limited to using a 0.04" (the thickness of your fingernail) ball endmill to cut the letters out. I initially tried to generate a normal 2D pocket toolpath, but it gave me a few errors and wouldn't work right with some of the font's tight corners. So my boss suggested tricking the program into thinking it was a smaller tool than it actually was, thus defining all the sharp corners and features. The downside was that if you used the lettering's straight contours, you would have an oversized and bloated look to the text. This is where I took advantage of the engraving; by only cutting five thou deep, I could use the tip of the ball endmill to touch the surface, imitating a smaller endmill with lighter cuts.
I also was able to finish up the rest of the baseplates for the Pocket NC Duifworkholding project. Still figuring out exactly how to polish the plates' surface and get them ready to ship it for anodizing.