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We doubled our feed speed to 120 ipm.
That saves 1.7 minutes cutting time per piece.
That's a saving of 30.6 minutes per 4x8 sheet.
Maybe we can double the life of our $17 bit?
If we can do that, we will find another savings of $8.
In all honesty, I think we can kick up the feed speed to 180 ipm safely.
Thanks, gentlemen.
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Another time saving method changing rapids to be a bit faster, and looking carefully at the travel moves. Those are pretty simple to see visually in Vectric, but the one that people overlook a lot is the ramping. I'm not sure what you're cutting, but if it's anything with a fair amount of detail you can dial in the ramping so the machine is a little more "snappy".
If you have tight corners and that sort of thing, you can reduce the time that the machine "hangs out" in those corners so it won't burn up the bit as much (or if you're using spirals it'll squeak less). If you have a lot of Z moves you can make that a bit snappier to. You don't want the machine "jerking" back and forth, but just a little snappier.
http://www.shopbotblog.com/2008/03/a...m-performance/
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I like to use 1/4" compression bits on my PRT. Cutting speed I use is 4-4.5 IPS with at 10800 rpm. I'm sure it the bits could be faster on an alpha machine but any faster and I'm risking losing positions. I used to spin them faster but find that they last longer at a lower speed. I use 2 flute cutters on melamine and 1 flute cutters on plywood. I use a two pass system where the first pass is the full depth less .03" in the climb cut mode then the second pass in conventional direction. Dont think a PRT or PRS would be able to go faster with a 3/8" bit. The 1 flute cutter can cut faster though.