I’m flattening a piece of figured wood, using a large shallow pocket operation, and I’m seeing that there’s a lot more tearout cutting in the X direction than Y.
Is there is way to do a cut where all the cuts are along the Y axis? I think this is a Raster cut. I searched the forums, but didn’t see anything applicable.
There’s nothing obvious in the Pocket toolpath, but the Texture toolpath looks like it has potential. However, I’m not sure what all the parameters do, or how ensure a simple, single depth raster cut.
So when you cut across grain even figured grain you tend to get tearout. If you have room to turn your piece 45 degrees you may get better results. This would cause a more of a shear cut at an angle rather than a 90 degree cut across the grain. You could also try putting on a coat or two of dewaxed shellac and/or wiping polyurethane. This hardens up the surface. In planers you often get tearout on highly figured woods because the grain tends to run in various directions. It is like petting a cat. If you pet them from head to tail the hair lays down. If you pet them from tail to head the fur gets all riled up and the cat does not like it much. Similar side to side also encounters more resistance than head to tail.
CC does not (yet) support raster pocket toolpaths, but hacking the Texture toolpath feature to achieve the same result sounds like an interesting idea, maybe with 0% stepover variation, min=max everything, that could work.
The other idea, if you have CC Pro license, would be to do a 3D toolpath but using a simple pocket. You then get the option to add a finishing pass, which is essentially a raster path, and it does have an option to let you select the angle.
