the trick to use them is to use a “follow contour” path, and just set an outside contour of your shape (always; you don’t want the sharp point to be exactly on the edge, even 0.5 to 1mm outside is better). Also you want to first do a normal contour with a flat bit so that the only thing it needs to cut is the round part, not the depth part. (assume that little point does not have a lot of strength in it, you want the side of the end mill to cut, not the point)
I was actually thinking if using the cutter the “normal” way on a Makita. I’m thinking of making a squircle radius of 16mm, so I don’t think it’s a possibility to do that on the Shapeoko with 1 pass?!
If you have any suggestions for doing it faster, please let me know. Right now I’m doing many passes with a round cutter. It takes about 20min right now. The result is nice, but it takes a long time.
yeah 3D carving (or the manual equivalent) is never super fast… but it gets you any shape you want.
if what you want isn’t exactly round or flat (or V) then… it’s usually the only real way to go to be honest.
unless you’re a handyman wizzard, manual routing is a few orders of magnitude less precise than your shapeoko… 20 minutes may seem like a long time compared to doing something by hand… but you need to factor in the time to fix the manual mistakes
.