I do have 3 items that i think would be interesting to consider to optimized carves
Toolpaths : They do only exist for Finishing but not for Roughing. I think is interesting to offer this option too as long as the ending is better when working against wood grain.
Roughing cut depth. I did try with a 6mm depth setup and the carve itself went fine. However is not optimized in order to let the finishing pass only need to finish. I ll explain may self better. Let say that an area shoukld end up carved at Z -11mm. First pass will remove 6mm, but the second one will remove additional 6mm and that an overall 12mm so the program decides to do nothing there on the second pass. Ideally sholud do something line Z = - $cut_depth + $terrain_delta + $security_margin
Lets say
For a point of -9 mm heigth , on the second pass the heigth would be -3mm
Cut depth would be 2 x 6 mm on the second pass
Presuming a security margin of 0.1mm
Therefore
Z = -6 + 3 + 0.1 = -2.9
This obviously stands for a potential cut depth of -6mm but in some areas that would be a value among 0 and -6
This would pretty much last the same, but would carve way more volume on roughing, so the finishing carving bit would need to work way less and prevent the risk to get broken as long as those bits are not intended for such huge depths
You can see it graphically on how the piece does look like after roughing
The last point is about optimizing finishing time. Presuming my second point is feasible, simply the roughing pass could do 100% of the carve needed so the finishing carve simply would not need to to anything. Doing a quick math based on the area of my carve representing the “sea” , this would turn from 4,5h to 90 min on the finishing pass
Hope you find this feedback helpfull to make ease pro better
I forgot to add that , up to date , I have been doing this with a script of my own extracting elevation points from my file system and created the final gcode to be sent to the machine
This custom script does already the work of carving as much as it can on the roughing pass but not tresspasin max depth by any means
Here you can see how it looks like after the roughing carving bits, and you can compare that uptput with the one easel is doing ( previosu images )
I see there is not much interest on this topic as long as no one is answering
Is a pitty that any feedback might be given , at least in order to state the reason why this might not be considered interesting from a product perspective
Anyway i upload the final work after the finishing carve has been applied
Full-depth cutout with tabs and horizontal finish pass. I can generate a toolpath but I noticed halfway through both the rough and finish pass simulations, it shows the tool stop passing. So when I go to click on the green carve button up top, it goes through the steps to make sure it’s ready for carving and when I click on the last “ok” button, I get an error stating that there are no objects in my design that can be carved with my current settings.
When you generate toolpaths, what’s the carve time provided for the roughing? I see that the estimate before calculations is under 1 hour, which could mean 0 minutes IF that 0.13" depth per pass happens to be deeper than the pocket of the sign there…
Roughing pass would be 41 minutes. The finishing pass would be 5H 43M. There have been times I’ve changed the depth per pass just to see if things would change and still get the same error. I figured it had something to do with the STL file. Tried to import the STL file to fusion360 and export it as a DXF. Get a different error while importing the file. something about reading it.
Can you set the Project to “unlisted” and send me the Link, a DM is fine if you’re concerned with anyone having access to the file… The link only shares a copy and nobody can make changes to your copy…
The project share via a link process is shown about halfway through this video.
hmmm,
the simulation runs though on my end without issue.
I’m not at home to try it with my cnc using the “carve” button but you could export the Gcode, then re-import it and run the carve that way… I was able to export and re-import without issue and it would run this without that fault of “nothing to carve”
Side note: IMO the 25% stepover is too large and a smaller stepover of around 10% would be more appropriate, although it would extend the carve time… you can combat this time extension by increasing the detail bits plunge rate to match the feed rate.
