So I have a job on some 1.3" thick white oak and it failed when it was about 80% done with the roughing pass (from Meshcam). I had it going way too fast, but it didn’t fail until then so I thought I was good to go. So it jammed or whatever (it stopped about 2/3rds of the way through a level so it wasn’t anything abrupt) and I want to try to run it again on the same wood but with slower settings.
Since this was the roughing cut and it was mostly done, can I just start the whole job from the top and let it cut air (or is that bad?) and is there an easier way to fast-forward to the stopping point?
You pretty much have it figured out. As long as the stock didn’t move in the clamps during the stall you can just run it again from the start, cutting air until you reach the point where you had a problem. If you have had to move the stock you will need to re-zero (if you can). If you want to do without all the extra time air cutting it can get quite a bit more complex very quickly and is rather a case by case situation. Not sure there is much you can do in MeshCAM off the top of my head.
Well, after a good attempt at recovering this job… it worked! It eventually got to where it had stopped and made it a little further. I changed to a newer build of Meshcam, too. The bad part is that when I flipped the piece to do the other side, it cut free the supports and the part came loose. My bad, I overlooked something in the job redo. The good news is it got far enough through that I can just plop the result on the lathe and finish it up by hand. (I usually make bowls on the lathe, but was just trying to do one on the Nomad to learn, so… I learned!) I need a lot of practice on 2-sided jobs.
The main thing I messed up here is trying to cut too deeply and the collet hit the stock. I need to figure out a way to cut that deep when required, but I guess I have to clear out a lot of the surrounding wood. (That wouldn’t have worked well in this piece, but I need to plan better.)