Trouble with arcs and circles

[tas99]

I ran my first job using VCarve Pro 3.1 on my relatively new PRT Alpha and had a few problems. The job seemed to run fine for the v-carved letters and texturing but when I tried to cut a large oval around the part (~ 12in x 18 in) the machine chattered and vibrated so much during the cutting I stopped the job. I was cutting MDF with a ½ in bit, ½ in plunge at 6 in/sec. I air cut the job and had the same problem so it’s not an issue with speeds or cutters.. I’ve cut similar circles and arcs in Part Wizard and from the command line and never had this problem. I was using the Shopbot (arcs)(inch)(alpha_control) post processor in VCarve.

Any ideas?

Tom

[paco]

Tom, check to see if the ellipse is compose of numerous straight lines (segments) under node edit mode... if so, try to redo the ellipse with bezier. You can do a bezier based ellipse with the ellipse tool.

The current release will create segmented curve when using the offset tool. This may be one of the reason why you end up with a segmented curve. I believe this is/will be fixed in the next release... or at least, it should be fixed (it is not in 3.322 beta)...

Does that help?

[tony_mac]

Hi Tom,

Can you e-mail the VCarve Pro file - the .CRV file that will include the design vectors + the calculated toolpaths. Please e-mail the file to - support@vectric.com (mailto:support@vectric.com) and we will take a look.

Regards,
Tony

[tas99]

Paco,

I tried your suggestion and that seemed to be it. I looked at the drawing and sure enough. offsetting creates a segmented curve but drawing with the ellipse tool creates bezier curves. I wonder why they did it that way? When I created each ellipse instead of offsetting it cut just fine.

I also sent copies of the files and toolpaths to vectric so they could take a look.

Thanks,

Tom

[srwtlc]

Tom, I think that this may be fixed in the next version. I've had the same problem at times and I have had better luck with the latest beta. Sometimes it's not an easy ellipse that needs to be offset, but a more elaborate shape and that same thing will happen.

Scott

[paco]

This is the sort of "bug" that I'm pretty sure VETRIC will fix by the weekend!




I can tell y'a that there are some VERY nice improvements on the way for the next release! Hi, hi!... BETA testing; I'm always surprised at how fast VETRIC stuff evolve rapidly.

Gotta go...

[tas99]

Thanks for everyones help and suggestions. I'll be looking forward to the next release.

Tom