Hey Brady,
Thanks, now I got it!
I working on the relief right now, and I went with a 0.5 to do rough-roughing and I felt it too strong and because I went with the grains the wood cracks. I read now in other thread that people recommend to go against the grain with the roughing. What are your thoughts about it?
I then changed to 0.25, and I broke the bit too times, I went to fast. I have to say that I didn't have a lot of patience and I learned my lesson.
The path had 0.2 allowance, and because the Z was off a bit few times, I wish I would have left more...
So with the 1/8" I went by the books (almost) and run it at .35" stepdown, 10% stepover and speed of about 1 ips. what do you think about that? (I'm using Walnut)
Is there a good table or source for those parameters?
I feel that the low stepdown creates a lot of unnecessary toolpath - where the bit travel over and over the relief in order to get to the border, or just "clearing" area that have been cleared by the roughing pass. I wish artcam would create a smarter path. Should I go back to use Partworks 3D?
What is the best tool to create 3D reliefs toolpath?
My last question is about leaving the machine to work on it's on. I remember that I've been to a bootcamp and when the subject came up people were concerned with fire. At my Grad school, we use to run a small CNC overnight all the time. A friend of mine also told me that they have a large CNC at school and they leave it to work unattended. Machine a detail relief I feel can take more than 40 hours of work, and it can become significant in my progress. What do you think about it?
Well for the meantime, I installed Icam application on my iphone (only $5), and have a webcam installed near the machine, so I can see the machine running on my phone or on a web browser. Now I feel a little bit safe to get out of the shop for 5 min. can get a snack