Spoiler alert: there aren’t any! I often get asked what the best smoothing and tolerance settings are, and if smoothing and tolerance even really matters. These are great questions, and I’d love to provide some concrete facts that will solve this problem for all eternity, but it’s not that simple.
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A really great analogy for determining the smoothing and tolerance needed for a machine is the search for the right instrument for high school instrumentalists. When I was in high school, the politics surrounding getting the right horn pretty much consumed the musical part of my life. I, personally, went straight from a beat up old student horn to a professional- grade horn in high school. There were many others that went from rent- to- buy horns to semi-pro horns to pro horns. My teachers were inundated with parents nagging them with "what horn should I buy my child?" The answer, much like the answer to the question of tolerance, was "it depends." If the kid was not going to seriously consider playing in college or at least at a high level in high school, then it was not worth it to buy the professional grade horn. If the kid didn't look like they were going to be very successful in instrumental music (something hard for parents to admit), then it did not make sense to buy the professional horn. But there was no right or wrong answer. The answer was "it depends."
Because I honestly believe that CNC processes such as routers, mills, and 3D printers are very much becoming the new frabricating means of the future I was curious on what this article had to say. What I find interesting is the statement in the article”The truth is, there are no “best” settings out there. The only way to arrive at “best” is to understand the relationship between your CAD, CAM and machining tools and how they work together.” The is true of every tool to be honest, but I feel that for some reason people continuously seem to forget that CNC tools are in fact still tool with another tool ( the computer) attached to it. And as with working with any tool you need to spend the time to learn its particular characteristics of how it operates. I feel if more people come to this realization than we will have more success in our integration of CNC into how we fabricate.
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