77 minutes to cut a square?

[Pan (Andy photenas)]

Hello I am working on what I should be expecting from a machine like the shapeoko five pro. I am working hard to learn, carbide create, and it’s coming along fairly well.
My question is does 77 minutes to cut a 18” x 18” square with filet corners out of 1 inch thick Pine seem about right or do I have Settings wrong and can speed that up?
Below are the settings I have set I’m not 100% sure how to tell if it calculated the proper type of material or not.

[Dooryard (Knox)]

do you need to use an 1/8" bit? 1" is pretty deep for one and the default settings are usually quite conservative which is reflecting in your estimated time. If you can up that to a 1/4" bit you can easily double your depth per cut as well as maybe up your feed rate to 80 ipm to start. With pine you might have some tear out as well so be prepared for that.

[Pan (Andy photenas)]

I’m having trouble understanding how the bigger bit can go quicker as it’s cutting twice the material out?

[Pan (Andy photenas)]

Oh my God the time dropped to 17 minutes with a quarter inch bit!!!

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

It’s more rigid and can move faster with less likelihood of breaking.

Also, the #102 1/8" DEFAULT tool is quite slow/conservative.

What material are you cutting?

Lastly, how deeply are you cutting? If deeper than the diameter of the endmill, add offset geometry and cut as a pocket down to tab height or the penultimate pass.

[Pan (Andy photenas)]

I still have not cut anything, because I don’t understand the program fully yet, but the woods I will be using as I live in the north east will be Pines Oaks, and Cherry mostly.
Do most people use the quarter inch bit for general material removal being faster?
And only use the smaller diameter bits for details?

[Dooryard (Knox)]

exactly yeah, 1/4" bits are easily my most used bits.

but it all depends what you will be making

[Pan (Andy photenas)]

Thank you for the explanation @Dooryard
Knowledge is power!

[Dooryard (Knox)]

everyone here is very helpful and friendly, I just happened to catch your question, try some stuff, ask questions, imo its the best way to learn. best of luck!

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Okay, I got to a 78 min. toolpath by cutting around the perimeter of a 30" x 30" square to a depth of 0.625" using the #102 1/8" DEFAULT tool setting.

Changing that to Hardwood reduced it to 56 minutes, and Softwood 28 minutes.

I use a #102 quite a bit (well, a 1/8" downcut, c.f., the Amana #46200-K .125" 2 flute down-cut which we sell).

My suggestion is to not use the #102 1/8" DEFAULT feeds and speeds, experiment in some scrap at first, start w/ the larger 1/4" tool, and work your way down to 1/8" tooling once you have a feel for how a good cut sounds.

Also, avoid slotting.

Where possible avoid slotting and add geometry and cut as a pocket

Making vacuum hose adapters

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and/or

Adding geometry to cut as a pocket with a finishing pass

One technique which is often suggested to avoid slotting is to add geometry around a part which one wishes to cut out and cut as a pocket down to tab depth — here’s one technique for that. In this case, the project is a bevel gauge which will be cut out of 0.0625" (~1.5mm) thick aluminum: [bevelgauge] Due to the narrowness of the angles, an 0.03125" endmill has to be used, so after importing and scaling the file (we will be cutting out one which is 3") we select the perimeter and offset it tw…

and consider leaving a roughing clearance and taking a finishing pass.