Spoil board surfacing

if I am surfacing a new spoil board with a 1/4 shaft 1" 3 wing bit and doing 39"x39" area, should it really take 6 hours to do? cut settings: 30 inch per min., plunge 9" min, depth per pass 0.05 for a total of 0.1 depth? any setting suggestions? this will be 3/4" mdf

You can go into machine settings and change your stepover, what that would be I have no clue as I have not surfaced mine with that bit. Be careful I have heard stories of folks hitting the center hold down screw in the stock X carve spoil board. You could always incrementally bump your speed up after it is running to cut time off.

1 Like

No, 6hrs is excessive.

Realize that default stepover is 40% of width of bit entered. This is a typical value for rough carving where one usually go as deep per pass as the material/machine allow.
Skim-cut is shallow and increase stepover to say 80% will lead to shorter total tool path (imagine using 80% of your mowers width to do the lawn, compared to same lawn with 40% width usage)

Here is a sim I just set up to see how it came out, 38min total for two passes.
You may drop feed rate to say 40IPM and and go 1/32" in a single pass, you can override speed in Easel if you feel its too fast or too slow. Repeat program untill whole surface is cut.

1 Like

You might want to note that you machinable area is not 39X39!
You will be crashing your machine if you try that.

1 Like

I appreciate the replies, I am placing the spoilboard on top of the original one as I don/t want to damage. if I cannot do the entire board, how big can I go?

That depends on your set up. You cannot go beyond the physical limits of your travel in x and Y

I cut out a piece of 1/2" MDF 30" X 30" and also drilled the holes in it so I can access the threaded inserts in the waste board.

1 Like