Noob, troubles uploading VCarve gcode to Carbide Motion

[TMH]

Sorry if this is a double post, I wrote it once, hit submit and it just seemed to disappear...
3rd try now

Early in the process of learning VCarve 9 desktop. I've run several projects, mostly cutting 3d letters and a few 3d figure carvings as learning exercises.

I use other cam software and now, VCarve desktop for design , Carbide Motion for machine control, my cutter is a Shapeoko3XL.

Yesterday I completed a "Merry Christmas" 3d letter design in other software, saved it as an stl and imported to VCarve. Once open in VCarve I had to scale it a bit to fit within the 24 inch restriction, no problem, I then went to setup rough and finish 3d toolpaths. I selected a 1mm tapered ball nose mill, ran the simulations then saved the gcode. One thing I noticed right away was the size of the gcode files, 16,937 kb and 12,485kb, wow!

So, went to upload the rough file to my cam laptop, nothing happens. Tried the same with the finish file, nothing. Try and upload several other VCarve gcodes I've run in the past, no problem.

I guess the files are too big? Why are they so big? What did this noob do wrong?

[Adrian]

3D files are always huge as there are so many moves in them. The bigger the piece and/or the smaller the cutter the more lines of code there are. A 1mm ball nose is extremely small for a 24" piece. Usual would be a 3mm ball nose for finishing at that size.

Not sure how you transfer the files but if you're doing it by a memory card or USB stick are you safely ejecting it via Windows to ensure that the file has been properly written?

[TMH]

3D files are always huge as there are so many moves in them. The bigger the piece and/or the smaller the cutter the more lines of code there are. A 1mm ball nose is extremely small for a 24" piece. Usual would be a 3mm ball nose for finishing at that size.

Not sure how you transfer the files but if you're doing it by a memory card or USB stick are you safely ejecting it via Windows to ensure that the file has been properly written?

Ok, thanks, thought it might be too small. I’ll try with a 3.
Using a memory stick, eject it before I remove it. Maybe I’ll just wait a few minutes before I eject it.

EDIT: nope, still no go. Guess I'll back burner this, try importing stl files with fewer letters and see what happens. Was hoping it was a simple problem.

[martin54]

It shouldn't be a problem at all Those files are not particularly large so should save OK. Only time I have had a problem is when I have removed the USB stick before the file had finished saving
Have you checked the Memory stick to make sure the file is actually there ? You could also open it in a text editor & check the gcode is complete.

Do you use the toolpath preview much ? As Adrian has said a 1mm ball nose bit is very small for a job that size & with a small step over is likely to take a lot of machining time
I use the largest ball nose bit I can that gives me the level of detail I require, easy to do using the toolpath preview & because they are very accurate it is easy to compare the results you get using different sized bits.

If you try a 3mm bit & the preview is as good as it is with the 1mm bit then try a bigger bit again, you can do that until the quality of the preview is no longer acceptable, could end up saving you hours in machining time

[TMH]

Thanks Martin. I do indeed use preview, I was just curious to see what would happen if I chose the smaller bit.

As for my problem, I’ve now redone the basic design and it is cutting as I type. Using a 1/4” ball mill .

I guess the original file was corrupted although I saved it to various memory sticks after making minor changes.

Back to work now!

[martin54]

I do indeed use preview, I was just curious to see what would happen if I chose the smaller bit

Once you reach the ball nose size that gives the maximum level of detail then all that will generally happen if you use a smaller bit is that your file size will increase & it will take longer to machine Read on the forum once that the vectric models are designed to give best results using an 1/8th ball nose bit when machined at their import size

As for your original problem, great that you have managed to continue with the job but if you should manage to solve the original problem at some [oint in the future it would be good if you could update the post
You never know when someone else will come across the same problem.