How to engrave small lettering with the X-carve?

Got my new belts installed (and tuned properly with a fishing gauge). So I finally got a good cut of the plaque (see photo below). The Vcarve Pro file is also attached.

The entire cut was done on walnut with a 0.5 diameter 60 degree vbit with a feed rate of 40 IPM, plunge rate of 9 IPM, and pass depth of 0.025".

There were four paths used and three of them (the border, the “flowers”, and the pilot holes for drilling) were cut with no flat depth. The fourth, the text path, used a flat depth of 0.05".

The border, the flowers, and the pilot holes all cut relatively quickly and pretty close to the VCarve time estimates. However, the text path took over 7 hours to cut; about 7 times longer than the 55 minutes estimated by VCarve.

So what I’m left wondering is if using a flat depth is what is responsible for the text cut taking so long? Or is there something else in my settings, or something wrong with my machine, that could be causing the long cut time?

At a complete loss as to what to do to speed the cut up while still getting the lettering to come out clean.

TrexOak121616.crv (3.1 MB)

Thank you!! I feel very stupid for forgettingto use this option. I’ve been away too long and without you ,I would’ve bought a new bit and it would’ve taken me 46 minutes to carve!!! Thank you!!

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