Avoiding "air-cutting" with multiple toolpaths

I am new to Carbide Create and am currently using the CC Pro 14-day trial. One of my first projects is to create a topographic model of Mt. Saint Helens on a piece of scrap plywood and I am following @wmoy’s YouTube tutorial. In the video, Winston is using an older version of CC Pro and he shows how to start with a 0.25 roughing step, followed by .125 roughing before proceeding to a .125 ballnose finishing toolpath.

When I replicate this with my model, I noticed a couple of things:

  1. The .25 roughing operation went smoothly
  2. CM prompted me to swap to my .125 square cutter (as expected) once the initial toolpath was finished, but it didn’t probe with the bitsetter before progressing to the second toolpath.
  3. I then broke up the three toolpath into separate jobs for the Shapeoko, but CC Pro/CM repeated many of the cutting operations that had already been finished by the 1st toolpath

Questions:

  1. Should CM have automatically probed the x-axis using my Shapeoko Pro’s BitZero in-between toolpath?
  2. How do I avoid the air-cutting between the two roughing passes and only have the second roughing pass cut areas left behind by the first toolpath?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Check your post processor. Some versions of CM default to generic gcode or grbl. Make sure your post processor is set to Shapeoko

Open CC and under the Edit Menu Select Post Processor

.pp_shapeoko

1 Like

Thanks Guy. My post-processor was already set to ‘shapeoko.post’

Did your tools have different numbers?

If they did, send the file in to support and we’ll do our best to look into it.

Thanks Will. I have sent the files to support.

-Jamie

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