looking for advice on parallel tool paths

[rockaukum]

I just completed carving a wavy flag.  I had help from this forum on the design process which was great.  However when I went to carve the flag, The feed rate would slow way down on slopes and end of runs.  Sometimes It would be different speeds going one way and then faster or slower coming back on the next pass.  I thought this was controlled by the use of feed optimization in the feeds tab, which I did not activate for this operation.  I did activate the smoothing function.  When I ran the simulation, It showed a 2.5 hour operation(approx) time and while watching the simulation, it did not appear to have the slowdowns.  When I did the cut, it took over five and a half hours!  

Any advice would be great!  If you want need any additional information, please let me know.

Thanks for the help!

Steve

[ea425019]

I didn't notice anything obvious, quite mysterious to me; which may explain the lack of responses to this one from others.

I'd offer to do a little air-milling on my cnc for a minute and see; yet today my machine/computer are not available, new computer setup.  I am curious about the influence of your post processor, and such.

[hamid.sh.]

So you're gonna finally make it 🙂 I saw your message in the previous post but at the time was busy and afterwards forgot to reply.

Will take a look at your file but I am sure you can get much better help regarding your toolpath in Manufacturing forum. There are experienced machinists there who can assist you with this. 

[ea425019]

Hi,

I ran your parallel toolpath on my machine, it's speeds are a consistent 100IPM, as you scripted it, no issues.

Machine: Avid router Nema 23 Avid control system (Easysmoothstepper), with Avid postprocessor for Fusion360.

I hope this helps.

[rockaukum]

ea425019,

Thanks for running the code and confirming it ran as scripted.  I am leaning towards data starving.  The machine was going so slow so I over rode the speed to 150.  I'm not sure but logic makes me think that may have added to the problem of starving(?).

Hamidsh,  

Yes I finally go to this,  Although I completed the cut, there were issues (other issues with the machine, lost steps) which led to random holes (two, as I was there for the whole cut and heard the miss steps and was able to shut the machine down.  I reset and continued as I figured the wood was ruined so why not finish the cut to see if there were other issues.  Can you fine the patch repairs, there are two and one more that I left as it was shallow and I would have messed it up more that it is.

Steve

[rockaukum]

Is there something with setting the tolerance the same as smoothing?  I have read several postings and articles on smoothing and tolerance but don't quite understand the concept.  It seems as a generic starting point is to have the smoothing four times greater than the tolerance setting?  I had it set to .0004 on both.  I went back to simulation and checked the "show points" tab, then changed the setting on tolerance to .04 and checked the simulation again.  It appears to have quite a few less points.  So, does the machine slow down at each of these points and are these facets where the machine slowed down for the change of direction?  I thought smoothing would take care of most of that but just don't know enough to understand this.

I hope to do another cut later and want to try to get this figured out before I do.  

Thanks to all who are helping out with this!  I do try to scour the net for information prior to posting questions.

Steve