Changing bit sizes

[Will Young (Unregistered Guest)]

When creating stacked toolpaths for a single project and you have differing bit sizes. What happens when it's time to change bits. Does the shopbot stop and give a message that it is ready for the new bit?

[steve4460]

The software will not let you save toolpath's with different cutters together .So you will have to save them seperat and therefor you will know when its time to change the cutter .

[supertigre]

Will;

With some third part software it is possable to generate multiple toolpaths with a tool change and tool length calibration as well. I use RAMS with a customized ShopBot post processor.

[paco]

Will,

you can customize the way you want it to let you know it's time. There are many way to achieve this kind of "prompt"; you can have to pause, sing a tune, trigger a light... you can do this from the post processor, manually editing the file or use some nice and cool little applications like AtoZeditor from Ryan Patterson, The Header writer that is in the Virtual tool library of SB3 and I believe a new one of this kind is about to be launch soon (maybe in the next SB3 release?). Those ease the task but any text editor will do. Customizing post processor can be a good idea but make sure you work on copy and you very understand what you change in 'em... and run test"S".