Have tried all day, but can't get it right

[Frank246 (Frank Smith)]

While waiting for the ball bits, another question;
The run time calculates at more than 17 hours for this front and another 10+ hours for the “bowl” cutout on the back.

I don’t have water cooled; just the basic 3XXL basic. No enclosure and room temp around 82 degrees.

Question: How much time should I run, constantly, before allowing the machine to cool/rest? While I’m not going to run it overnight, unattended, I am trying to plan my hours around the actual carving time. I’m thinking maybe 5-6 hours/day at the most with that divided in half each day for a cooling off period of maybe an hour…

What makes sense to you who have run long carvings?

PS: Will be running a dust collector at all times the CNC is running.

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

I would work out tooling and feeds/speeds to get the cut time down to something a bit more manageable.

If that’s not an option, you could use a text editor to divide the G-code, but that’s not something which is supported.

[Frank246 (Frank Smith)]

Appreciate the feedback.
I will keep working it down in Speed and Feed, but I guess question is both a conservatives amount of time to run at a time, and is there any issue with pausing over night other than power to the CNC and/or computer?

Even doubling the stepover size, the Feed rate, the time is still over 10 hours for the turtles back. Should I run the long without pausing and allow things to cool down? Has anyone run that long with a standard machine?

Thanks

Thanks

[Tod1d (Tod (with 1 'd'))]

I’ve left mine paused for several days, and continued right on when I got back.

However, if you know you are going to pause, I’d recommend breaking your job into sections, or levels, and outputting paths that you know you can finish. That way, if the power goes out, or anything else happens, you’re not scrambling to recover or wasting time cutting air.

[Frank246 (Frank Smith)]

Got it. Thanks and I’ll see what I can do to break apart the tool paths.

[Frank246 (Frank Smith)]

Just FYI feedback.
The face of the turtle back took over 8 hours and the back took over 5 hours.

I did find that nothing got to hot; the router stayed cool. The X, Y and Z motors stayed just slightly warm to the touch but certainly not hot at all.

I did run the roughing path on both the back and face at close to 350/in and the machine held up great
I did slow down to 250/in for the 1/8 ball, but it still worked very well.

I use a 1/2 horse bag vac with a Hoe Depot orange cyclone trap and it worked very well to capture nearly 99% of the dust in the HD bucket.

[MikeG]

@Frank246 - Do you have pictures to show off all your hard work?

[Frank246 (Frank Smith)]

Still working on some black walnut, small versions, and applying finish but here are a few. The large is in black walnut and the small in various cherry blends.