Can someone explain to me why the advanced vcarve creates such long running toolpaths on projects? I have been testing some of the different design types for projects and have tested advanced vcarve to standard vcarving. Advanced vcarve just doesnt seem feasible in almost every project I have created where vcarving is taking place.
For example; I created a novelty flow chart and tested the toolpath under the advanced vcarve and also the regular vcarve. The regular vcarve can run the job in 17 minutes, faster if I increase a bit of the feedrates. But when it comes to the advanced vcarve, the program says it will take 67 minutes to run the exact same design.
As for cost effectiveness for running such jobs, the advanced vcarve is not, and seems never to be, effective in any of my designs that I have created. I created a project that took 2.5 hours to run. It ran 4 different tools, 90 degree vcarver, 60 degree vcarver, 1/4 flat upcut endmill, and the 1/4 ball nose endmill. The two vcarving tools took the longest for the most part, but when I tried to design the under advanced vcarve, the total runtime for the part turned out to be over 2800 minutes.
This is unreasonable and unheard of. I couldnt see spending that much time on a project that would only possibly yield me $100 to $140 at best. So, am I missing the point of advanced vcarve? Would it be better to only use in a single line cut and then vcarve the rest? I just dont see the point in using advanced vcarving for any project when the estimated time calculates to days of work.
Any advice in using advanced vcarve in a effective manner would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Can you post here a project that shows such big time differences between V Carve and Advanced VCarve? Without being able to see a specific project, it’s very hard to diagnose what’s leading to the long work times.
This kind of project just doesn’t lend itself to Advanced VCarve because it doesn’t have any large areas to carve. All the areas to be carved are small enough that the single pass down the center that a VCarve does is faster than tracing the perimeter that Advanced VCarve does.
Once you have features wider than your bit, or of the bit has to go so deep that it goes through the workpiece, then there’s a good candidate for Advanced VCarve.
Note that if you increase the depth the normal V carving will look better (and only go up to 21 minutes), while the Advanced V carving will increase to 66 minutes.
As @mhotchin notes, there’s no reason to use an Advanced V carving here since there aren’t any large open areas which are so wide that the tool can’t cut them.
So, you are saying that the advanced vcarve is better to be used in cutting a slot that would be wider then the cutter where there would be a flat bottom trim to the cut so the vcutter isnt diving deep into the part?
I know I can adjust to different types of cutting to get better and faster results without advanced vcarving all of the work. I work on many different designs and as I work on these new designs I also learn more and more about the program. This way I can run designs faster and more efficient.
Playing around with the C2D file, I reset both DOC on the tools and Max depth on the toolpaths to 0.500 so it’s only making a single cut.
Simulating, I noticed Advanced V-Carve looked like a sewing machine. A lot more ‘picking out corners’ than the regular V-Carve. Nearly all of your extra machine time is in retracts.
Setting the retract distance down to 0.020", and the feedrates up to 60 IPM, I got the times down to 10 min, and 12 min.
But since your design is all narrow (narrower than the tool width), unless you have another need to limit the depth, regular V-Carve is what you want.
Thank you for your input and taking the time to look over the program and to work on it a bit. You have helped me know that I can reduce much of the time on Advanced Vcarve if I decide to use it in the future. I agree with your assessment about using standard vcarving for this project.
I was originally trying to understand what Advanced Vcarve was actually doing and why so I knew when to incorporate it into a project. Thanks for the assist in helping me understand and to know that I can make advanced Vcarve work better for me.
