Hi guys, what would cause a pocket command to run all the way to the bottom of the cut and then go cut the other side all the way instead of switching both sides of the cut in turn?
If it’s a single region, it’s a bug (undocumented feature). Typically happens on narrower regions.
The only recourse I know of is to program each depth in a separate operation.
If it’s separate regions, again that’s just the way it works. It actually saves time by not bouncing back & forth between regions.
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Can you post the file?
Ok so I have watched my machine cut a bunch of pockets now. And as far as I can tell in a single region pocket cut it’s almost always cutting one straight to the bottom and ruining my piece in doing so,because the whole point of the pocket cut is a relief cut for a contour through .8 of an inch of hardwood.
This seems to me to be an enormous flaw for a pocket to cut this way. To have to program that cuts over and over again seems like a heck of a lot of work. Can anyone tell me a better way to make this thing cut the way it’s supposed to? Does anyone else have this problem? PS I did not have this problem before the update.
Also, you mentioned it has this problem on narrower cuts. I am using a quarter inch bit and I have the pocket with set to an offset of .27
I can make it bigger if I have to, but it’s starting to eat up a lot of wood per product so that does matter and I’d like to keep it to a minimum.
On a simple example, it seems to be working correctly in both V7 & V8
If I reduce the stepover to force 3 passes, it fails & cuts the first pass all the way to the bottom, then finishes the other passes correctly, one level at a time.
Sadly, it seems nearly every time the first pass is the pass along the part, and the remaining passes are what should have been the rough passes.
For now, the only way to control it is to break it up into multiple toolpaths. 
Wow that’s a pretty huge issue! Is there something that is being planned on getting fixed? Reprogramming that would take me nearly as long as the entire rest of the project. Also, I really appreciate your work and help thank you very much.