My wife an old tooth brush and got it to clean up a lot. I will look at adding a clean up pass and see what that does to the time. Right now I’m at 1h 20m for this. Don’t want to take 3hrs per sign. But also don’t want to spend an hour with a tooth brush per sign lol. Decisions decisions
1 Like
I thought you had children? How much pocket money do they want to earn? 
1 Like
My kids are too “boogie” for that. If it smells anything close to manual labor they haul ass. Unless they want something. Then it all depends on how bad they want it lol
Funny thing is if it didn’t spend so much time bouncing back and forth from one edge to the other to do the smallest hole it could cut in half the time it does. I don’t know if there is a setting I can change in estlcam to have it not do that. I stand here watching it thinking “this machine has worse ADHD than me” lol
1 Like
Can I do anything about Estlcam jumping around like this? Seems as if it didn’t spend so much time traveling around it could do the same cut in a lot less time….
1 Like
That does seem odd. What is yiur tool settings and did you use vcarve?
1 Like
All set with vcarve. V bit set to the max cut depth and pocket tool set to same depth. It does the same random bounce around on the pocket tool as well. If you see the 2 bottom diamonds on each side of my original picture. It cuts those a dot at a time. One on the left. Then all the way to the right for one dot. Then back for the second on the left. Makes no sense. Cut the whole thing while your there lol
1 Like
And the sign in the video is done…
I do believe I will stick to carving them the first way. This took 4 hrs and there is so much cleanup work needed for me to be happy selling it.
1 Like
Yes. You can select each object individually and tell it to machine them in the order they were selected. That will be much faster then grabbing them all at once. Well I guess there is a balance. For a one off just grab them all and let it travel. If you plan on making multiple take the time to do the CAM in order.
3 Likes
You can also speed up your Z considerably. So some test and leave some margin for safety but you can move the Z much faster. It looks like either your depth of cut is too much or your XY speeds are too fast.
You should really take some time to do some smaller sample test cuts to dial that in. Maybe start with a 1/8" flat to take care of most of it before doing the vbit. The last carve I did in pine took a little while but a very quick once over with the wire brush and it was nearly flawless. The newest one is pretty rough, something is a bit too far off.
3 Likes
Oh I love Germany but I don’t think I’d last very long without getting into trouble.
So an artist printmaker - specifically someone who makes lino cuts can’t work to commission or do multiple copies? Why don’t you just do a numbered series (say of 1,000) pieces, sign and number each one as you sell it. Similarly artists accept commissions all the time.
You really just need to see yourself differently - you are an artist who makes things not a maker! 
1 Like
Do you have a rough guess of where I should start? The one with the video was rough all over. But I was also a thrown in their project. Same sign but wanted to see it carved opposite and I did not adjust settings like I normally would. But you definitely have me wondering what I should have my Z set up at. The carves I have done prior to this always came out real clean. This is a new bit so learning feeds and speeds for sure.
You can, but then you have to found a company that trades with art. So making the art is still a free trade, but selling needs s company. 
It’s a tad complicated…
There is a setting to optimize toolpaths. It works great if you don’t have a tool change. If you have a tool change you need to set the order manually for satisfying results.
1 Like
I had an exhibition of paintings in France a few years ago, as an artist (under Australian tax law) I had to earn $40,000 from selling them before I could claim any of the expenses as a deduction. As an art EXPORTER however, well the sky seems to be the limit!! 
This morning i changed a few things. Slowed feed down from 15mm/s to 12mm/s sped Z up to 10mm/s from 3mm/s Also found machining order menu under Edit that I have never noticed before. When i clicked that I was able to hit optimize like @Tokoloshe suggested. Its still sorta all around but at least its doing a complete letter or carve before it moves on. I took out my 2mm carve bit and just let the V bit do all of it. After optimizing the machining order it wanted like 27 (actual) tool changes and I said no thank you. I can see that i need to change my rapids z settings. its moving faster machining at 10mm/s than it does just picking up to go to the next part. Also I added in a clean up of .2mm hoping that will help it some as well. We shall see shortly! Thanks everyone for the help!
1 Like
Another sign done after some edits to Estlcam. It still bounces around but it does complete a cut before going to something else so that is MUCH better. Speeding up the Z was a big improvement as well. I took the rapid in main estlcam settings from 250 to 500 but I think I need to go more. I should have calculated it out but I wasn’t awake enough yet lol. Here is the sign from this morning…
That’s after about 5 min with a stiff brush and an X Acto knife. Much better than the first one. I stepped up the cleanup pass too .25mm and slowed down the cleanup speed from 12 mm/s to 10 mm/s. See if it cleans up any better. But I’m much happier with this cut for sure. Thank you to everyone for all the tips and suggestions!!!
I’ll post a finished pic of the first sign soon. Still needs another coat of varnish to be complete
4 Likes
How big are those? I‘d really like to challenge you to a cut the time in half challenge, but I don‘t even have time for my own projects… After the control box maybe.
3 Likes
They are 11” x 19”. I’m game for the challenge. I’ll have to spend the next 2 weeks researching how to make things faster and still keep quality lol
2 Likes