Big Blue lives

[robtown]

After 2 moves and being in storage for the last 3 years, old blue is coming back together.

Blue is almost 20 now. Still running strong. I built an Acorn controller for it a few years ago, more for fun than necessity as the original one still worked fine.

Looking forward to getting back to tinkering and making.

[robtown]

After 2 moves and being in storage for the last 3 years, old blue is coming back together.

Blue is almost 20 now. Still running strong. I built an Acorn controller for it a few years ago, more for fun than necessity as the original one still worked fine.

Looking forward to getting back to tinkering and making.

Taking it out for a test drive after being disassembled and in storage for three years.

[robtown]

Taking it out for a test drive after being disassembled and in storage for three years.

How it’s going:

[8Ball]

That material looks like PVC.
You should ramp up your feeds. It looks like you're producing baby powder vs. chips.
And if your time stamps indicate run time, you're about 5-5.5 hours over when it should've been finished,
and it isn't completed yet.
What are your settings?

[robtown]

That material looks like PVC.
You should ramp up your feeds. It looks like you're producing baby powder vs. chips.
And if your time stamps indicate run time, you're about 5-5.5 hours over when it should've been finished,
and it isn't completed yet.
What are your settings?

All valid questions and suggestions.

I stopped it last night about 2 hours in, and restarted this morning.
It is not the most efficient tool path I’ve ever run, for a number of reasons, but mostly because my safe z in the tool paths was set to 1.5” and yesterday it would retract to that on each move between cuts. Before I restarted this morning I hand edited the file to make the safe z .25”… a big timesaver.

Now that I’m running it, I see a number of ways I could get the same results in half the time or better.

The second part of that equation is just rustiness in my part. Haven’t attempted anything like this in years. I’m doing this in Carveco for the first time… AND I just had to replace my control computer because it’s hdd failed, so I had to reset everything from scratch including updating CNC12 to the new Router version.

Not really sure what my speed settings are, it’s and old PRT with some updates, but I don’t really push it. I’m probably not cutting any faster than 3” per second. And my old PC 8512 is running at its highest setting.

[8Ball]

Which version of Carveco? Is it Carveco, or one of the Maker lines?
In my experience, Carveco makes design work horribly difficult, especially compared to Vectric's products.
The tools are hidden under drop downs, and every operation consists of at least two additional steps.
Vectric has the tools laid out much better. Not to mention, VCP is half the price of M+, and doesn't charge almost $300/yr to update.

YMMV