Can I divide the finish pass?

Hi. Let’s say I have a big proyect that needs 9 hours for the finish pass. Can I just use 2 rectangles so I can machine one half of the model one day and then the other half the next day?

Thanks.

I believe you can by adding two vector rectangles and machining the model inside those rectangles with separate tool paths
I have not tried it yet but I have seen a YouTube of Mark Lindsay doing this I believe
Let us know how you get one

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Great! Thanks I’ll.Hope it doesn’t leaves one little part of the piece without machining.(Between the two rectangles)

It should work but there is maybe a risk that the horizontal line at the junction between the two halves will be slightly visible. I would probably split the job differently: generate the 9hour gcode finish file, run it for 4.5hours, note the line of code where you stopped, do a little gcode editing to make a second copy of the file that only contains the gcode commands from that line on, and run that the next day. The same risk of not restarting EXACTLY where you left of exists, but I believe it would be less visible, because that would likely only be a single spot rather than a line. With the “two rectangles” approach, at the edge of the rectangle the machine decelerates/accelerate to reverse direction, so it’s more likely to leave subtle tool marks there.
It all depends how tuned your machine is, and how repeatable your homing is.

You should be able to overlap them I think just don’t group them
Now I did one where I paused the carve halfway thru but when I restarted it it carved at a different z height
My z did not change but the wood did die to temperature change from on day to the next
Louisiana has huge temps differences from early morning to afternoon so just be aware of that too

Ugh, that sounds really problematic. I guess I’ll have to test it in order to see how it goes.

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