Prevent raising router between passes

Is there a way in Carbide Create to prevent the cutter from lifting up to the clearance height between each pass of a multiple depth cut?

unfortunately that’s not possible in carbide create without some special post processor of the gcode…

it would be a good feature request to have though, and it’s not all THAT hard to build :wink:

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I have just come across this issue as well. I had a program that run perfectly (generated by the previous version of CC); and the same file generated by the latest version of CC adds the retract height between multiple depth passes.
Whereas on the previous version, the cutter did not retract.
Would be interested to see why C3D have made this change?

@WillAdams Hi Will, are you the right person at C3D to ask?

No, that would be @robgrz

Hi @robgrz
Do you have any info on this change to Carbide Create?
It doubled my cycle time, so does make a difference!
thanks

if this is critical to you I can make the stand alone gcode post processor I use available as a browser based tool… you;d basically pass your carbide motion gcode through it and it outputs more optimimal gcode with many of the retracts removed

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That’s a great idea. It wouldn’t be hard to write a Python script to do some post processing on the CC Gcode output. I may have to give that a try.

fair enough… I wrote one in javascript, but I’m much more fluent in python (and much more so in C). javascript+browser is the lowest entry bar for people to use it I’ve found so far.

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Sounds like a great idea! How do you use this in your workflow?

I design on a different computer than where I operate the shapeoko, it’s just one step in the path of copying the gcode over.
I’ll spend the 30 minutes or so it takes today to put it external online (instead of tied to my infratructure) and get you the URL. It’s basically a webpage into which you load the gcode, your browser churns it (nothing is uploaded) and then you “download” the optimized version.

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That’s great of you to offer - thanks for your help!

ok the browser based version of what I use is now at:
https://fenrus75.github.io/FenrusCNCtools/ccopt/ccopt.html

the key optimizations are

  • go up with G0
  • eliminate very small movements < step size (generated in advanced vcarve a bunch)
  • for several key cases, don’t retract all the way between “layers” of a pocket… if the tool can prove how to get to the beginning without needing to retract, it won’t
  • remember previous depths of the last 32 plunges, so that a G0 can be used instead of a G1

video of a design before the optimization:

and after:

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