V Carve Wizard - results.
Posted by
John Stevenson
on 2005-11-13 05:31:56 UTC
Well I do have to give credit where credit is due.
Over the weekend I was playing with the demo to see how this worked when applied to metal engraving as opposed to router work.
I had some files of a couple of badges I had previously done for the restoration people, one was already in CAD format having been cut with 3mm and 2mm slot drills.
I brought one of these into VCW but had problems with open entities, duplicates etc.
As this did work in CAD/CAM I was a bit suprised and I also remembered just how long it took me to clean a scanned in image.
I emailed the file over to support at Vetric and asked if they could have a look.
Within 1/2 hour I had a file back explaining what was wrong with the dxf, remember Saturday to boot.
So I set to cleaning this up and to be honest getting nowhere. A couple of emails later plenty of help but still having problems so I decided to start from scratch.
Found the original scanned in image and decided to see how long this took to clean up.
Brought it in, selected all, went join open vectors and click -- DONE!!
Wow colour me impressed, swapped over to the machining window and one minute later had a working file.
I have always been dubious of these one click we will do it all for you programs as although they do it they often don't do it the way you would if you had control of the program.
I believe they call it the travelling salesman syndrome where it darts all over the place.
Well VCW doesn't do this, if you watch the simulation the toolpaths are very organised.
Taking this one stage further I played with the tool selection I had used.
I had one end mill blocking out stock and a conical cutter to finish the shape.
Machining time was listed at 28 minutes.
By leaving the conical cutter alone and working with the end mill I found out that by increasing the end mill diameter it took less time but increased the time on the conical cutter to clean up.
Decreasing the end mill eased the time on the conical but increased the blocking time, also working with setover alter's the total time.
From the initial 28 minutes I found a 5mm cutter took 14.08, a 6mm cutter took 13.14, and an 8mm cutter took 13.34.
Going up or down from these cutter sizes took longer, so in this case the ultimate is a 6mm cutter and conical finish cutter.
This total 'what if' took about 5 minutes, far less than the time saved even on a one off, larger more complex pieces would save even more time.
I'm that impressed I have just bought a high speed spindle off Ebay :D :D
Vectric: http://www.vectric.co.uk
Pic of badge. http://tinyurl.com/djchs
John S.
This e-mail was scanned for viruses using BitDefender
Over the weekend I was playing with the demo to see how this worked when applied to metal engraving as opposed to router work.
I had some files of a couple of badges I had previously done for the restoration people, one was already in CAD format having been cut with 3mm and 2mm slot drills.
I brought one of these into VCW but had problems with open entities, duplicates etc.
As this did work in CAD/CAM I was a bit suprised and I also remembered just how long it took me to clean a scanned in image.
I emailed the file over to support at Vetric and asked if they could have a look.
Within 1/2 hour I had a file back explaining what was wrong with the dxf, remember Saturday to boot.
So I set to cleaning this up and to be honest getting nowhere. A couple of emails later plenty of help but still having problems so I decided to start from scratch.
Found the original scanned in image and decided to see how long this took to clean up.
Brought it in, selected all, went join open vectors and click -- DONE!!
Wow colour me impressed, swapped over to the machining window and one minute later had a working file.
I have always been dubious of these one click we will do it all for you programs as although they do it they often don't do it the way you would if you had control of the program.
I believe they call it the travelling salesman syndrome where it darts all over the place.
Well VCW doesn't do this, if you watch the simulation the toolpaths are very organised.
Taking this one stage further I played with the tool selection I had used.
I had one end mill blocking out stock and a conical cutter to finish the shape.
Machining time was listed at 28 minutes.
By leaving the conical cutter alone and working with the end mill I found out that by increasing the end mill diameter it took less time but increased the time on the conical cutter to clean up.
Decreasing the end mill eased the time on the conical but increased the blocking time, also working with setover alter's the total time.
From the initial 28 minutes I found a 5mm cutter took 14.08, a 6mm cutter took 13.14, and an 8mm cutter took 13.34.
Going up or down from these cutter sizes took longer, so in this case the ultimate is a 6mm cutter and conical finish cutter.
This total 'what if' took about 5 minutes, far less than the time saved even on a one off, larger more complex pieces would save even more time.
I'm that impressed I have just bought a high speed spindle off Ebay :D :D
Vectric: http://www.vectric.co.uk
Pic of badge. http://tinyurl.com/djchs
John S.
This e-mail was scanned for viruses using BitDefender