Ramping for Plunge Moves - Now In Beta!

Ramping for plunge moves is now ready to be used on your next project and is released into Beta!

To opt into beta, check out these instructions: How to Opt Into Beta

To learn more about ramping, you can watch this great video that Brandon made: Ramping Video

Here is a little more about Ramping, which you can access in the cut settings menu in Easel. Please leave your feedback in this post as a reply.

Taking the plunge - and ramping things up

On top of all the improvements to toolpaths and simulations, we decided to build a solution to one of the biggest problems customers faced—vertical plunging of bits into material.

We have all broken bits, or burned up bits, or even burned wood or melted plastic from vertical plunges. To solve this problem, the bit should be able to move sideways while also moving down. This is the basic element of a ramp move

With ramping in Easel Pro, you can prolong the life of your bits and get much better results with carving. Ramps for hard materials should be shallow, and ramps for soft materials can be steeper. We designed two options for ramping in Easel to accomplish this.

  • 5 Degree ramp for hardwoods, hard plastics and metals
  • 20 Degree ramp for softwoods, soft plastics and foams
  • Vertical plunge for drilling with drill bits (no end mills)


If you have feedback for ramping, please post replies here.
Happy carving!

Ben

7 Likes

Looking forward to trying it this weekend

3 Likes

Seems to work as it should. One of the better upgrades i have seen for a while.

4 Likes

Does it ramp tabs?

Hi Mark, yes when ramping is enabled it should generate ramped toolpaths for the plunge move of cutting tabs. Here is a quick screenshot of a file I am working with showing the ramp moves in the front.
Screen Shot 2021-05-20 at 9.18.07 AM

2 Likes

I’m very happy with the new ramping feature. I tended to get a lot of “burn” marks in wooden workpieces whenever my 1/8 or 1/4 bits only had to carve out a small section of material. I’m no longer seeing any of these marks. Thanks for this feature!

5 Likes

I used it the first time yesterday worked flawlessly, great well needed feature for sure.

3 Likes

I tried this for the first time today, I like the addition but am wondering if I did something wrong since each time the the spindle completed one path it pulled up went to the original starting point and started again for each path around the cut. This seems to add quite a bit of time to the cut.

1 Like

Hi Mark, thank you for the feedback. This is a known issue and is currently in the queue to be fixed. I will provide an update here when this is resolved.

3 Likes

nice, thank you

@Ben-Saks , I tried in cutting a circular profile and weirdly on the lead-in ramp it went the opposite direction from the tool path?

Came here to say this. added quite a bit of time to the overall cut time. like 30%. love the feature though, potential to greatly reduce chatter in the harder materials when plunging. excellent step in the right direction guys!

Hi Henry, can you share the easel project URL so I can take a look? Thanks

Hi Bryan, thanks for the feedback. While ramping is still in beta we are working on a few improvements to the tool paths so they are more efficient. It is however a tradeoff, as ramping inherently will add time to a carve as compared to vertical plunges. There are some projects in which ramping might not be the best option, this is why we left vertical plunges as well. Thanks again for the feedback!

My point though, is that there’s no reason for it to add time, from a mechanical perspective. I know there’s a lot more to coding the tool paths than snapping your fingers, but essentially, wouldn’t it be more efficient to code the ramping into the beginning of the tool path, rather than leading up to the beginning of the tool path? That way, your previous pass doesn’t have to backtrack to ramp into the next one. It just starts the ramp into the new pass as the previous has finished, and at the end, there’s a little bit of clean up. And, again, I recognize that I am not fluent or nearly as knowledgeable as I should be on the coding or overall cnc function, but is there any reason why this wouldn’t be a good solution for the time consumption factor?

So I really like the ramping feature however there is a huge flaw when using the ramping feature and a vbit at the same time. I have had two pieces ruined due to a random cut path being added, where it should have been a travel path. I know I am not the only person to experience this either. The first picture if they upload is how it was supposed to finish out. The second picture has a line right down the center that is only present when using the ramping feature.


Sorry about this, I’m passing this along to the team to see what is going on!