When i rout out a project that requires it to be cut out around the outside edge, the machine always does it on the finishing part of the project. It is not very efficient to do this and does not give the desired results. For instance, using a v-carve bit for finish pass leaves a wide beveled edge on the outside of the project. Or using a 1/16 bit and taking a long time to make the outside cut. How do I have the outside cut being made on the roughing cut. Not sure if I explained this correctly. Any comments or advise is welcome.
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Generally speaking, you probably don’t want to cut the piece free during the roughing pass.
I like to have 2 separate workpieces for these situations. The first does all the interior cuts, with a roughing & detail pass. Then I copy (move) the exterior cuts to the second workpiece, and cut that as a single pass cut using the same X/Y coordinates.
It took a bit for me to get comfortable with the idea that you don’t have to get everything cut on the same workpiece, but it frees up so many options when you are willing to make extra passes.
How do you separate inside cuts from inside cuts. When I cut through, I use tabs so the piece isn’t free to move once the outside cut is made.
that’s outside cuts.
Just don’t include the final outside shape in your first carve?
So if I had a sign, I might design the whole thing, then duplicate the design to a second workpiece. On the first workpiece, I’d delete anything that’s a through-cut (usually just the outside edge), then on the second workpiece, I’d delete everything I left in the first one.
Tabs are great, but I still prefer to keep everything solid until the end, because I’ve had occasional issues with tabs breaking, or even just the piece not being as stable with tabs. It’s not often.
This is how I do it as well.
This is also how Inventables Tec Support suggests doing it. That said, they acknowledged that this is less than optimal, and it is on their design list to be able to do more than just a two-stage carve. Once they add the ability for a third or even fourth stage carve, you could make your last stage the ‘cut-out’ portion of the carve. But for now, you need to do it as described as above (a bit of a pain, and adds time to the process, but with luck they will get this before too long).
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What is being offered here as a solution is what all Easel users must do since easel does not accommodate the use of tool paths in the CAD avolume. So you create your complete design then copy it to as many iterations as you’ll need to do the roughing pass, the finish path, and lastly, the profile(cut out) path. Keep the original safe. One the first copy, select the profile path and reduce the depth of cut to 000. Now execute the clearing path with the clearing tool. Once complete, choose your second cope and again set the profile to 000 and run your finish path with the selected finish tool. Make sure you have reset your Z position and make sure the original X,Y zero has been maintained. Once complete, go to the 3rd copy and update the interior carves to 000 and now you are ready to rune the profile carve. NOTE: the original X,Y.Z zero positions must be the same for all 3 carves.
If this sounds like a lot of work, consider Vectric where you design once and execute toolpath files for each path. Not 3 copies of the original where you have to Zero Depth areas you don’t want to be carved.
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