will i ever get this right???

[drrobin]

Okay, ready to cut my finishing toolpath for my lithoplane. I did a roughing pass and it looked like my inverted pic so I was excited. Then it was recommended I Z0 off the top of the table so I did that and recalculated and it was 21 hours! So, I went back to zeroing off the top of the material and it says 4 hours 3 minutes. However, when I began cutting, there really wasn't enough cutting past the roughing to hardly even make any dust.

I'm posting screen shots of each section in PVC. Can someone please look and see what I'm doing wrong? I'm hoping its not going to take 21 hours! I have a handibot... I went by the instructions on the video since I've never done this before. I would love to be able to try again tomorrow since I have the day off. Please and thank you!! Robin

[woody53]

Robin, I dont know why you did a roughing pass, I never have . I have done many, many lithopanes. I usually use a .032 tapered ballnose and a 5 x 7 litho can be done in around 6 hours. I run @ 130 IPM , .093 deep, 10% step over. Hope this helps, and I told you right.

Dave

[drrobin]

Thanks Dave, I'm open to any suggestions:-) I'll try that. Hey, noticed you live in JC! I live in Versailles just a little south of you! Small world...

[drrobin]

Another question... do you set your bit to be 0.093 and do one pass or leave it at the diameter and basically on this do 2 passes?

[drrobin]

Sorry, another question:-) Since you cut 0.093 and the material is 0.25, is that enough depth to allow light to come through?

[woody53]

Robin, my bit diameter is .032. Cut depth is .093, sometimes .125. In 1/4 inch corian it shows up beautiful. I use a tapered ballnose, look it up and see how it is ( precise bits) . Haven't broke one yet, but have broke a straight 1/32 and 1/16 ballnose.

[drrobin]

Finally got my 1/16 bn to work...again user error:-) Did a couple of lithoplane and love love doing them. It's so nice to actually make something that looks great since I've been at this for a month trying to just figure things out:-) Thanks, Robin

[woody53]

Post a pic and show Us what you did.

Dave

[drrobin]

Sure! This is a ~4x6 using a 1/16 bn. I'm disappointed in the pic because it looks much better in person:-) Ordered a 1/32 to use on this size to see the difference. Very happy with the results and can't wait to try more. Any feedback is appreciated to improve. I did have one area that it looks like the depth changed because you can see a diagonal line where this occurred. What is usually the cause of this? Happened on both litho's I've tried. Thanks! Robin

[sawmiller]

did ya lean on the table and watch it cut?
has happened to me

[drrobin]

that could have been part of the problem!!

[bill565]

One of the issues I had early on was the way my computer was going to sleep during the process of long runs.

My monitor would go blank like into a sleep mode, and when I would wake it back up I noticed it would leave a diagonal line with my cutting direction. I figured that by waking it up, caused a quick interruption to the processes running.

I followed all of the controller settings for optimizing windows (Mach3 in my case) and also changed my computer settings to not allow any sleeping or power saving during the cut. The only issue I have to worry about would be potential for monitor burn in, but I have a LCD just waiting to go in.

I guess with the long runs any potential power issues, or computer processing issues would show up. Don't turn on other induction loads like vacuums or such mid run, also make sure there is good grounding on your machine. Of course leaning on the table has to be a big potential as I know we all like to get the up close view of the process. Goes with the smile of watching it run.

Hope this helps.

bill