Group, Toolpath, Array? What order is best

[Les_linton]

Evening all.

After a 4 year hiatus we finished setting the PRT up today and are getting ready to cut. Updated VCarve Pro to 5.5 and sat down to draw some parts for a learning robot project my son is working on to teach kids about robotics.

Parts will be cut from either 3mm (1/8") Sintra or ABS.

There are 7 parts for each robot. All have slots or tabs that fit into each other. Almost square corners are going to require using a .0625 dia. end mill or smaller so speeds and feeds will be interesting at best. most of the cutting will profile on the outer edges, but there are two sets of holes and two square cut outs.

My first question: 7 parts per set. 25 sets on a 4x4 sheet. I have them drawn in AutoCad as a set and also in arrays on the 4x8 and 4x4 sheets.
do I import a set and toolpath then make the arrays in VCarve?

I've attached a couple of dxf files and would appreciate your thoughts.

I didn't think I could forget this much in only four years...

Oh ya, any thoughts on feeds and speeds for these materials using 0.0625 or 0.0313 end mills.

Thanks all,

Les

[metalworkz]

Hello Les,
Welcome back!
This is not my normal type of work but if I understand your question correctly all you need to do is open or import the file in VcarvePro and then you can work with the toolpaths however you see fit. I did take a look at the MiniTugArray_2d file and there appears to be a lot of duplicate vectors and overlapping vectors that you should probably fix before trying to create the toolpaths. You have already drawn the parts so unless you need to change something to fit it on your sheet etc. I don't think there will be much work involved. I also noticed that most of the vectors are not closed and you may need to join some of them before toolpaths are created also.
I just loaded the second file and there are also many duplicate and overlapping vectors that should be cleaned up before toolpaths are made. I hope this helps with some of your questions and perhaps someone with more experience on this material will reply with information for speeds and feed suggestions.
For the duplicate vectors you can use the 'edit' button on the top menu bar and then use the 'Select all duplicate vectors' command to highlight all the duplicates and then delete them, but you may still have to join some or most of the vectors remaining.

[Les_linton]

Thanks for the quick reply. I found just what you did. I'm working on cleaning them up now and will see how it goes.