I’m slowly learning how to do things in Carbide Create, loving it, and have reached the point where I’m trying to optimize the way my toolpaths are sequenced to minimize tool changes at run time.
I was recently running a project that had two toolpaths that called for the 60 degree v-bit, with the same speed and feed numbers. The first toolpath was a vcarve and the second one was an engrave. I put them back to back in the design, expecting that the cuts would just flow one into the other without issue.
However, what actually happened was at the end of the first v-bit toolpath, Carbide Motion prompted me to change tools to the same tool that was already loaded. Now, clearly this is a minor inconvenience at best as the effort required to continue the process was a couple of mouse clicks and a switch thrown off and on. But I was puzzled as to why the tool change prompt even happened.
So my question is - what is it that triggers the tool change beside the tool identity itself? Is the type of toolpath (vcarve vs engrave vs whatever) a factor in forcing a tool change? If so, why?
No clue. I created the toolpaths in what I thought was the “normal” way - selected the vectors, clicked the button for the toolpath type, then used the tool selector to pick the #302 bit from the library. I used the Carbide-3D-Shapeoko-Hardwood #302 definition for both toolpaths.