Is there every to many lines to a shopbot file?

[David Iannone]

I have just discovered vectrics V-Carve Pro. I am very happy with the textured backround feature. I am runnnig toolpaths that take 3 hrs to run on my PRT with 75,000 lines. Is there ever to many lines. If I upgrade to Artcam pro for 3-D work, is it really possible to run the bot overnight? I have had my shopbot for a few years now, only doing simple 2-D cut letters and shapes, once in a while a carved sign, but am finally getting time to get in to more fun stuff. Also for anyone running hours at a time for 3-D work, is there any special considerations. I run my bot out of my 2 car garage. Thanks for any advise.

Dave

[joe]

Special Considerations:

Do you have neighbors?
Do they have guns?
Can you sound proof your bedroom or are you married?
Do you have a spindle?
Have you upgraded your fire alarm?

J

[robtown]

I recently tried to run a file with over 350,000 lines it and got an error that said something to the effect of "too many lines"...

[David Iannone]

Lol joe, i am running a porter cable, but I am only looking to carve signfoam in 3-d for long runs, and find I can run at 10,000 rpm, which isn't too bad noise wise. The garage is on the opposite side of the house. I can't hear the router from the bedroom at 21,000 rpm v-carving cedar. As for my neighbors....I haven't had the cops come to the door yet. Lol. I didn't think about the fire alarm...hmmm, Is a spindle that much quieter?

[fleinbach]

Yes, a spindle is that much quieter.

I have a file with 863,790 lines in it that cut just fine on my PRT Alpha. I beleive it took about 4 hours to cut.

[patricktoomey]

David,

NEVER run the 'bot unattended would be my advice. I had a near fire trying it and here is a post with other fire experiences...
http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/messages/312/14636.html

The closest I get to unattended now is having a camera on the ShopBot with a monitor in my office (75 feet away in another building) I have a hard-wired e-stop line run to the office and I watch and listen to the audio feed from the camera so I can hear anything strange. Even doing this scares me sometimes and I only do it with jobs where the workpiece is screwed or clamped and the vacuum hold down and dust collector are not running. Running any air moving systems would quicly fuel and spread a fire so I make sure someone is close to the machine while those types of jobs are running.

When I run very large 3D jobs I break them up into smaller sections and carve them one section at a time. If that is impractical I will sometimes pause the file, turn off the spindle and restart everything the next day.

[David Iannone]

I dont' run any vaccum hold down. I screw everything to the table. No dust collection as of yet, but I just ordered the Alpha dust skirt from shopbot and have a 6.5 hp shopvac I was going to use. Wow, the fire thing never crossed my mind, thanks for the link patrick, I think I will just break up long jobs like you described. Hey Frank, that is great cut time, you got a picture of what you carved, what size was it?

[fleinbach]

David,

I was wrong about the four hour cut time above. I should never depend on my memory. The file size was 863,790 lines but the actual cut time was 17 hours. I was cutting 40 ceiling medallions for one of my theater room jobs.
They are 4 inches in diameter and where cut out of 1 inch MDF. This file size was for only 20 of them. So I had to run it twice.


This is what they looked like;




5769



The ruffing pass was cut with a 3/8 inch diameter Whiteside up spiral running at 5 inches per second and took 55 minutes.

The finnish pass was with a 1/8 inch Ball Nose running at 5 inches per second and took 17 hours.

I also have a camera with audio that I monitor from my office 75 feet from the Shopbot. There is also a feed to my main shop which is above the shopbot.

[David Iannone]

Nice work Frank, Thanks.

[john_david]

Isnt the limit for a .sbp file 1,000,000 lines????
I only know coz I had a couple files from BOBCAD that made over a million lines


JD

[jhicks]

WOW! 17 hours?? not 17 minutes?
Thats HUGE, what is the size of that medallion.
These were 4" x 6" x 3/4" thick cut in Poplar and took more like 17 to 20 minutes entirely with 3/16" ball nose.

Understand the difference in design but both have the entire surface machined. We used a 9% step over, started on the top middle and progressively cut deeper on the z and essentially "shaved x,y, and z an somewhere around 2 to 3 IPS.
Am I missing something.
5770

[fleinbach]

Jerry,

Are you saying that you cut all 20 pieces in 17 to 20 minutes? That would be less than one minute per piece.

One of my pieces was taking approximately 50 minutes. I believe the longer time was due to all the detail in my pieces.

[joewino]

We run some rather detailed woodgrain effects in the background of our "sandblasted" signs and have had the ShopBot running for about 7 hours at a time. I'm not sure how many lines it was but we turned it on and went home...which is probably not a good idea. Most of the time we are in the same building and just go about doing something else.

There was no vacuum on - we just screw HDU to the table.

Up to now we have had no problems.

[jhicks]

Hi Frank, Guess I didn't read closely enough. The medallions were about 17 minutes each. Guess that means yours were about 40pcs /17hrs =25.5 minutes each for finish pass.
Very nice design. How large and deep were they?
Seems curious that rough pass would be longer than finish pass but regardless, I'm sure you dialed it for maximum efficiency with that 5IPS speed.
Nice work

[fleinbach]

Jerry,

They are 4 inches in diameter and .74 inches deep. I did not use a cut out path as it wasn't needed. There was just a very thin skin on the bottom after the 3-D cut file was run.

Rough pass was only 55 minutes while finish pass was 17 hours.