I’m trying to make a basic drop tray with a US flag in the bottom of it. The stripes are wide enough to cut with the #201 1/4" endmill, but it leaves rounded corners at the end of the stripes (as expected). This toolpath only takes 3 minutes.
I have also tried cutting the stripes using the Advanced VCarve toolpath. I set it to use the same #201 endmill for the area pocket tool and the 90° Vee bit to cleanup the corners. This tool path takes 55 minutes.
It seems really odd that the AVC toolpath is not using the #201 to clear out the pocket and is instead doing it all with the #301. At least, that is what it appears to be doing to me.
Am I doing something wrong or is there something odd going on here?
Try doubling, or tripling you v bit plunge rate (if you’re using CC default settings). Also, in the setup menu decrease retract height. I use .0625. These two things will save some time.
I pulled your file to take a look and with the changes that I applied with the 1/8 endmill, the one Will gave up above, the time was able to be reduced to 22 minutes on the stripes. This could possibly be brought down a little more with some other minor adjustments.
The retract height Logan stated would further reduce all of your tool cycle times as well. I am sure that many of your tool paths are probably on the conservative side and could be further reduced on each of their perspective runtimes.
I even went in and changed your 90 degree vee bit stepover from .008 of and inch to .003 inches, or from .2032 mm to .0762 mm.
Thanks gdon, those are some good files for me to look at.
Thanks for another very helpful reply Will.
Hi Logan, those are some good tips. I had already reduced my retract height to 3mm, but I’ll try lowering it and increasing the plunge rate.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I was able to get the stripes down to 16 minutes using the 1/8 like Will suggested and being more aggressive on my feeds and speeds. I think I’ve been less conservative with my larger bits (the 3/4 bowl bit and 1/4 endmill), but I’m sure I’ve been really conservative with my smaller bits (1/8 and 1/16).
Would you mind giving my settings a sanity check on this new file please?
I downloaded your updated file and am looking over all of your toolpaths to see if anything else can be adjusted a bit more to take off any time, but we don’t want to push things so aggressive that we cause your machine to stall or break any of your bits as well.
You can further reduce your stars and outline toolpath to 19 minutes by increasing your plunge rate to 635 mm and your feed rate to 1524 mm. Other then that, I see nothing else wrong.
Not bad for a run of 62 minutes for two trays, not including the tool change time. The real question would be the cost per tray that you are willing to sell them for to both be competitive and profitable. I like your setup and design. It’s not overly complicated.
I have only one tray designed and not yet ran to check out my design. It is a 3D wolf tray. Just this one tray takes over an hour to cut. Once I get to carve my first tray, I will then have an idea of what more I can do to reduce the runtime on it.
Thank you! I’ll make the changes to the plunge rate you mentioned. I’ve not sold any of the flag trays yet, but I have used my co-workers as market research and I believe around $30 is the sweet spot on these. The CNC stuff is just extra money for me, so as long as I enjoy the time in the shop and it brings in more than it costs, I’m happy. In the last month I’ve sole 44 seasonal trays ranging in price from $25 to $42 dollars. Not too bad for only having the machine setup for a total of two months.
I’ve yet to try any 3D carvings (too busy making and selling the holiday trays!), but it is something I want to do. My folks love wolves, so I’d be very interested in seeing how yours turns out.
I finalized the little details of the inside chamfer carving of my wolf tray. Will be going over to the shop tomorrow at some point and running a test tray to see how everything comes out. Will take a 103 minutes to run, not including tool changes. Possibly looking at a 2 hour cycle time. I’ll post a pic when its done.
Sorry that I havent posted a pic of the wolf tray yet. I had some tooling issues where when I was working on my plexiglass fish carving, I had my 45 degree chamfering tool in a dremal with the extended end and it slipped out of my hand and as I was trying to catch it from dropping it skimmed the ground and broke the tip off of my tool. I had to order a new one and finally received it. I will finally get to go and get the carving done.
Well, I ran the carving my first run. I see a few issues with the carving and have to make adjustments. The 3D design though has a fault in it and I will have to figure out the way to fix it. But here is the carving as is and plain without sanding or anything else.
The 3D portion of the carving took 1 hour and 15 minutes to completion. Total run time was around 1 hour 45 minutes. I think that I could get it down to 1 hour and 20 minutes on total cycle time.
