Slow peck drilling

[kstrauss]

When peck drilling each downfeed is done as a cutting rate move rather than rapid to depth followed by a peck at the cutting rate. In addition, each retraction is made to the "safe" height rather than to the surface of the workpiece. Together these issues make peck drilling *much* slower than necessary. Is there any way to alter this behaviour and/or use the G81/G82/G83 canned drilling cycles that are understood by most controllers?

[Adrian]

Which version of Cut2D are you using? The current versions (Desktop and Pro) have the option to retract to the previous cut depth rather than safe height.

[kstrauss]

I'm using v8 desktop.

The retract time isn't a problem since it is done as a G00 move (rapid). The big delay comes from the slow downfeed between the retract position and the next peck. It would be much faster to rapid to the start of the peck and feed slowly from there. Using the canned drill cycles available with most controllers would be even better.

[IslaWW]

The "RAPID_PLUNGE_TO_STARTZ" feature is able to do just what you wish. I am not sure that it is supported by the desktop versions tho. If so, the info for enabling the feature is in the post processor editing guide.

You should also be able to add the gcode for a "canned" cycle in a custom postP, it would then only work for that operation.

[Adrian]

Learn something new every day. I didn't suggest that (despite having it turned on in my PP) as I thought it would only plunge to the Z2 position set in the material setup but having tested it it does indeed rapid plunge to the previous cut depth as well.

[kstrauss]

That sounds like a great solution to my query!

The PP manual does not appear to have been updated for Cut2D v8 but it says that RAPID_PLUNGE_TO_STARTZ is ignored in v1.5. I added it to my custom post and it appears to have no effect. What program/version did you test with?

[Adrian]

It works in VCarve Pro and Aspire. No idea if it works in the Desktop versions of VCarve and Cut2D though.