Hi, hopefully an easy question from a relative newbie to this area of work.
I load my .stl file into Vectric Cut3D & work through the various stages within Cut3D to define the machining with no problems. My issues is with the time to run the code.
For example, Cut3D will state that time to complete the roughing phase is say 27 minutes, but then when I create the post process file, load it into GCode Sender the actual machine run time is much longer, up to twice the time. Just watching the cutter path, it seems to complete each roughing depth cut as expected, but then slowly goes around the profile again in what looks like an unnecessary pass. It’s this unnecessary cut that bumps-up the time. The profile I’m cutting is all curves, no straight lines at all. Very frustrating problem. Any advice very very welcome 
… Thx … Simon
Probably best to ask this question in the appropriate Vectric forum, as it sounds software-specific.
Time predictions are based on cutter feed rate primarely.
However - there are two factors that have great impact on overall speed:
- Acceleration value (how much time is spent ramping feed rate up and down)
- Max feed rate / acceleration for Z-axis which is typically less than X/Y
When doing a intricate design (lot of curves typically) there are a lot of acceleration that take place, reducing the effective feed rate. This is probably why your time estimates are off.
This scenario is further compounded when doing relief cuts (X/Y/Z continously) as Z slows it down further.
Nothing is faster than the weaker (slower) link.
Optimizing the tool path (in CAM) is also something you need to address, but I dont know Vectric so hopefully others will chime in 
Assuming Cut3D is like Vcarve, there are 2 things that need changing/tweaking:
-
there is a rapid feed rate value that needs to match the GRBL value but still may not be accurate
-
there is a scaling factor that you need to tweak based upon machine performance. I think 1.4 is fairly accurate.
I’ll check those out … thx for your time