77 minutes to cut a square?

[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

While cutting up vacuum extension wands for this is expedient, it’s a bit problematic given that Shop Vac recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought at the last minute, and production hasn’t caught up. I need a receptacle for the Sweepy 2.0 dust fitting — one option would be to purchase one from Woodcraft, but Carbide 3D sells blocks of HDPE: which looks to be just barely big enough for things to fit. Measuring the hose fitting I get a diameter of ~63.5mm — offsetting that twice we arrive at…

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.