I’m just measuring up all my cutters and getting them into ESTLCam. What’s the max speed I can get on the X/Y? Just so I don’t type in something not possible. Google didn’t help me although I’m sure the answer is out there already.
To give you an example - I’m sure a 15mm DOC on a 1/4" bit is going to be a cake walk for the machine. I think I’ll be able to go pretty high. Any advice on how I might measure the speed if I do some cuts by hand and film them can I extract a mm.s figure from that somehow? I’ve got oodles of film editing stuff on my machine in the office.
I’m going to set up a file with just some lines and waves and see how it all behaves at various speeds and depths. But first I have actual “work” to do with it so I’m jumping in with both feet. If things go horribly wrong I’ll know very soon on the first panel (there are four). I have two mulligans on this project but hope I don’t need any. I’ve switched the DOC to 30mm. I’m sure it can handle it - ice is very soft. I can plunge a 1/2" bit that’s 4" long well more than halfway in and draw freehand with it without too much force on the tool.
I’m going to document and film as much of this as I can.
The absolute max is about 120mm/s but at that speed there is very little power. As always deeper is better than faster, if you can clear the chips. Above 35mms power drops off extremely fast. I would start there (that is what I use for rapids). Remember the robot is doing the work, if it takes a little longer that is better than taking 4 tries to get it right loosing time and money in the process.
If you are going for speed demon you should lower the accelerations some more. Maybe cut them all in half.
Yes, I’m keeping a mental note of the time I’m spending in ESTLCam vs the time I’d be spending printing tiled prints, taping them together, freezing them to the ice and then cleaning off all the frozen paper afterwards - not to mention the hand carving time. I figure it might be a break even time wise but certainly not in terms of effort required. I’m silly to start with a multi panel project but it is what it is. I think with what I learned with the St Nicholas multi panel setup I can handle this ; )
Not sure if I can upload PDFs but this is the project - a larger than life logo engraving with a “sit on for photos” bench attached to the side.