Bottom thickness

[jcoxen (John Coxen)]

OK. This request is caused by my own noob-ness and the mistakes I make when I forget a step when I setup a job. I’m getting to the point where I usually no longer forget to measure material thickness before fastening things down but sometimes I still get a little too focused and skip steps.

When doing pocket cuts for change trays, etc. it would be nice if you could specify the bottom thickness you’d like to leave and have the cut depth automatically calculated based on material thickness. I was thinking a third field in the Toolpath Cutting Depth section. It would be linked to the Max Depth field so that whichever one was filled out, the other would be automatically calculated - i.e. with 1 in. thick stock, entering .25 in “bottom thickness” would automatically fill Max Depth with .75…and vice versa.

This would also help with job flow running multiple jobs. Minor differences in stock thicknesses would automatically have the same “bottom thickness” calculated job to job.

[CrookedWoodTex (Tex (Don't Mess With My Texas!))]

John, not that it will help your situation, but Vectric Vcarve software has a feature that consists of various variables that apply in such situations. One of those variables is called “t” for thickness and is automatically filled out with whatever material thickness you have specified in setup. There are various calculations/formulas you can use such as “t - 0.050” which cuts material out and leaves the remaining material “0.050.”

It works for pockets, but I typically use it when making a toolpath for cutting a part out of larger pieces that have variable thicknesses after planing, sanding etc.