I carved a sign for my brother today and with 75% stepover there was material left. I changed the tool to 50%, but when saving the program it didn’t change anything, time stayed the same, stepover stayed at 75% (though the tool list now said 50%). Tried with several tools and several different stepovers, even changing the tool in between and saving it so force a new calculation: the stepover setting is being ignored somehow. I used the newest version 12.064D.
Can you reproduce that @christian-knuell?
Also, you can only automate a carving for the first time you start the program. After having edited something else the automatic toolpaths for carving (maybe the others as well, didn’t try) are just not being calculated.
Cheers.
/edit: I just checked with 11, there is also a warning message if you go over 20% stepover (which is weird, since it’s a flat endmill) and limits you to 20. The settings are correctly applied though.
If you’re talking about a flat tipped V-bit, try setting it up as a chamfer tool. Carves in v12 can be done with Engraving (pointy), Chamfer (flat tipped V), and Tapered (radius tipped V) tools. The default stepover is a percentage of tool (not tip) diameter, but v12 has an option to set stepover as a distance. The only function that I know can have a greater than 45% stepover is linear (VS parallel, peel, etc.) pocketing. A 20% maximum stepover on V-bits makes sense.
Even though you told me it wasn‘t a problem @christian-knuell, I tried it once more, I did send you screenshots: Did you figure this one out? If needed I am going to cut two more identical pieces with identical settings in V11 and V12 and try to get to the bottom of it.
the stepover for carve pocketing with a dedicated pocketing tool is fixed and cannot be changed. The function expects a flat tool for this so this should not cause issues.
The stepover for pocketing with the pointy carve tool itself can be adjusted.
Yes, that’s what you told me in your mail as well, but in V11 it was not a fixed stepover and produced much smoother results. The way it is V12 is unusable for signs etc. I did another direct comparison, V11 is able to change the stepover.
If you want it to be a fixed width, please put it at like, 25% or 30%, not 75% or 50% or whatever it is just now. It leaves ridges standing.
I’ve just uploaded an update (but still version 12.066) where adjustable stepover is enabled again (in a range of 10 to 80% for dedicated pocketing tools - the main tool can again go lower).
But I can’t promise to keep it. It got removed because of occasional crashes and I’m not sure if I got the root of the issue fixed. I may need to go back to fixed stepover.
Thanks. I sent you all the files in a mail where you can see that the fixed stepover seems somehow broken in E12. Will get to you if there are any problems and thanks for fixing this. I really don’t know where the mistake was that it didn’t calculate the fixed 20% you set, maybe you can figure it out.
I just went through the settings again: it works now. Now that I am able to play around with the stepover settings again I am positive that the fixed setting you implemented before was 75% not 20%. Maybe you just typed the wrong number before?
