This has been a nagging question for me but recently I made design files for small dice boxes on the Nomad and used a “pocket cutout’ to finish the milling (rather than a simple outside contour). The design is not very efficient but for never-before-used-CNC adults I thought I could trade a bit of time to remove any uncut corners or thin edges to minimize stresses of the cutout itself (about 1” deep on a 8.2" high x ~1.7" wide) hardwood block using double sticky tape as my hold down. Sometimes when I do pocket cutouts like this I get each pass in the entire pocket. Other times I get a subset of the full pocket to full depth or an edge contour full depth and then the rest of the pocket is finished after. Yesterday during my beginner CNC class I used a file that simulated the pocket cutout, as I wanted, the entire pocket at one time. When I used that file with Carbide Motion and the Nomad it cut differently, doing a full depth contour cut in the pocket first (i.e. a single deep slot) and then came back to removing the rest of the pocket. Both my home computer and the computer connected to the Nomad were using 836 on Macs. I came home to recreate the pocketing pattern but find on my simulation it removes the entire pocket one layer at a time (which is what I want). I am attaching the file in case that helps. It begins to make me feel crazy that the pocket cutting pattern is dependent on a variable that I don’t understand. Any thoughts?
1.2 Box Lab Dice Box Bottom 001.c2d (124 KB)
I just realized (long weekend) a difference…Carbide Create Pro is connected to the Nomad, my home version is the free version. Could that be why the pattern is different??