I am brand new to the hobby. I received my Shapeoko xxl today, but have not assembled. I have had the program playing around with it, learning the functions and so forth. I created a few smaller items with limited detail to start with and get a feel. Over the past few night I have been working on a more complex design and tonight when I went in and inputed all the tool paths it is telling me that it is going to take 8+hrs to complete. 7+hrs in just the v carving. This seemed very excessive and leads me to beleive that I do not have the tool set up right or something. Even the pockets seem like long times. Maybe I am wrong and everything is correct. If that is the case I will never make this item i am afraid. I have attached images of the job setup and the toolpaths. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Can you post the generated G-code file here ? CC has been known to give “creative” cutting time estimates in some instances, and indeed there is no way that V-carving with #301 at 45ipm will take 8hours, unless something is seriously wrong in the vectors (multiple duplicate/overlaid stars or something, but it does not seem like it is the case)
Carbide Create vastly inflates the time to carve. On complicated vcarve cc usually in my experience over estimates by double. If you load your gdode in Carbode Motion you will see that the estimated time will be almost half. However the estimated time in CM is also usually wrong on long carves and it will take slightly longer to carve from the estimate given in CM.
Complicated projects take a long time to cut. So be sure you have your laptop plugged, your Shapeoko firmly plugged in to the wall and the usb cable on the laptop. During a long curve you can write down the time on a note pad and the line number is given in the window and you should write that down . You dont have to be perfect with time and line number of gcode but this is to protect you in case you get a stoppage due to static or other things that can happen. By having the last known good line number you can edit your gcode file with the preamble and then starting with the last known gcode line and include the rest of the file all the way to the end so you dont have to air cut things you have already cut in case of a stoppage. Depending on how big or long your cut time is you can mark this information about every half hour or 15 minutes if the cut time is shorter.
you could halve that 0.2 retract to 0.1, but that won’t make much difference.
was also noticing the 1/2"stock thickness (I understand this is just a messing around project). I don’t think vcarve will work with those wide type fonts without going through the stock…just a guess… that made me look at your job set-up background grid. If those are 1/4"grid squares then it looks like some of the carves would be wider than the 1/2" bit and that’s another problem.
Thank you for the reply. I actually have not generated the gcode files yet, but I will do that tonight or tomorrow and upload it here. I really appreciate the offer to help. I just got my xxl yesterday and worked all day getting the garage ready to assemble it.
That makes perfect sense, and you are spot on with that. After looking at the document background I do have the scale at .25. The A in Amendment definitely has a few spots that are over the .5 scale. So I am assuming that I will either need to change the font I am using, shrink the font I am using to keep those spots under .5, or increase my stock thickness. I would think the later of options is not the best option. Thank you for pointing that out for me
You can order 3/4" v-bits if you like the type.
To get that project like you want I would generally use a 2" thick board, plane it both sides and have fun.
Vcarve takes a while sometimes. It seems to make a lot of unnecessary plunges but gives a very nice looking effect.
Don’t feel bad about spending the time. My wife had me carve some signs for yard sale items. One was about 12"x 12", the others around 6x9. 5 signs on one 30 x 30 panel, with nothing fancy was a 37 hour project on the cnc. ( finishing with a 0.032 for detail)
…she will probably sell them for about 5 or 10 bucks each…
I will just drink Rum and watch them go…
Being as you are new to this machine (so am I) I might suggest not keeping any Large hammers around the Shapeoko…
