Help? moulding toolpath

[ddrumguy]

ok so im up at 3am this morning watching the video on vcarve pro moulding oolpath so i thought i would give it a go.. so to test i drew up a simple concave design, followed the video and told it in my toolpath setting to use 2 bits. first was a .25 endmill and the second was to be a .125 ballnose.

ran the job and after the clearing bit was done it asked for bit no#2, so i loaded the ballnose (and as soon as i did i thought wait a minute i need to re Z this thing for the bit change - how does that work?) i clicked ok and it asked me to z the bit - ok perfect was hoping for that. so i Z;d the bit and then it said to start the router. so i went to start the router and it wont start .hmmm then i think well i have see this weird behavior before , once i click ok it will start - clicked ok and the gantry moves and proceeds to snap my expensive onsrud bit... ugh!

so at this point it dawns on me - wait did i click the output for the router? i didnt - it didnt tell me to.

so i figure well might as well run it in the air w/o a collet to try to verify. So i jog home, reload the file and start over.. same exact behavior and before clicking ok to start the router after what would be the bit change i try to click on my output for the router - it wont let me click it? So there goes that theory.

Can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong ? im assuming this works and its likely operator error but i went through the scenario a few times (even took a video) to try to retrace my steps.

any advice is appreciated

oh all this on a prs alpha if it matters

[steve_g]

A simple solution would be to save each toolpath separately.

I’ve run many miles of extruded moldings but never tried the clearing toolpath feature… In my mind, the very small stepover you’re using for your finished toolpath doesn’t require any clearing! However, sometimes you must be creative in designing to prevent the toolpath from starting in a deep area. This may require “reversing” a profile or adding a ramp to a profile that later gets removed.

SG

[ddrumguy]

ok so im up at 3am this morning watching the video on vcarve pro moulding oolpath so i thought i would give it a go.. so to test i drew up a simple concave design, followed the video and told it in my toolpath setting to use 2 bits. first was a .25 endmill and the second was to be a .125 ballnose.

ran the job and after the clearing bit was done it asked for bit no#2, so i loaded the ballnose (and as soon as i did i thought wait a minute i need to re Z this thing for the bit change - how does that work?) i clicked ok and it asked me to z the bit - ok perfect was hoping for that. so i Z;d the bit and then it said to start the router. so i went to start the router and it wont start .hmmm then i think well i have see this weird behavior before , once i click ok it will start - clicked ok and the gantry moves and proceeds to snap my expensive onsrud bit... ugh!

so at this point it dawns on me - wait did i click the output for the router? i didnt - it didnt tell me to.

so i figure well might as well run it in the air w/o a collet to try to verify. So i jog home, reload the file and start over.. same exact behavior and before clicking ok to start the router after what would be the bit change i try to click on my output for the router - it wont let me click it? So there goes that theory.

Can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong ? im assuming this works and its likely operator error but i went through the scenario a few times (even took a video) to try to retrace my steps.

any advice is appreciated

oh all this on a prs alpha if it matters

Well finally got this figured out with much help from Shopbot support.


As it turns out, this shopbot was originally ordered to have a spindle and a router. Because of this when running a toolpath that had a bit change in it, once switching to the second bit it attempted to turn on output 1 but the router wouldnt turn on. Further investigation showed that the machine was running on output 2 only . This was only working previously because i was always clicking on output 2 before cutting (what i was told to do by prev owner) and I never did bit changes within the jobs.

So to fix the issue, shopbot support had me do the following to get all cutting using ouput 1 which is now auto selected by the job and the tool numbers assigned (1-19)


so we swapped wires :

k1 & k2 over to k5 & k6 (+/-)

Now the job runs correctly, i dont have to click output 1 before starting a job and as long as my second bit has a different number, it prompts to do the bit changes, Z and then starts the router - YAY !!

Kudos to support - Ben over there was very patient with me as we worked through this and i asked lots of questions along the way.