I have a Shark HD4 and want to cut multiple identical small pieces out of 1 piece of wood without rezeroing every time.
Thank You, Blane
wanting to cut multiple identical pieces
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Re: wanting to cut multiple identical pieces
toosar:
To cut multiple finished parts from a single piece of material:
Assuming you're using Vectric VCarve...check to see if you have the "Offset and Layout" group way down at the bottom of the Drawing panel (left side usually; depending on screen size, you might have to scroll in that panel to get to the bottom set of icons). If you have the Create Linear Array icon (first picture), that's what you need. If you don't, you might need to upgrade to the Pro version from the Desktop. Make your material stock the size you need for all the parts, not just the one.
If you do have the feature, just follow along: select the vectors for the part, make the linear array, making sure to leave room between them so the profile cutouts don't cut into the adjacent part. Then, you select the appropriate vectors for ALL the parts as the input to your toolpaths.
If you don't have the feature in VCarve, you can also simply do a copy/translate on the vectors, add them into your toolpaths, and it will cut them too.
NOTE: Be wary and check your toolpaths to make sure the first part doesn't remove all of the rest of the material stock. Though usually that's easy to tell because it takes about forever to compute, and then makes a mess all over the displayed material.
The other way is to cut multiple parts from multiple pieces of similarly-sized stock. In that case, you'd just create a work stop in the form of a couple blocks of wood or similar, clamped to the bed/spoilboard. Then, the material is pressed against those registration surfaces and clamped into place, and you re-run the toolpaths.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Thom
To cut multiple finished parts from a single piece of material:
Assuming you're using Vectric VCarve...check to see if you have the "Offset and Layout" group way down at the bottom of the Drawing panel (left side usually; depending on screen size, you might have to scroll in that panel to get to the bottom set of icons). If you have the Create Linear Array icon (first picture), that's what you need. If you don't, you might need to upgrade to the Pro version from the Desktop. Make your material stock the size you need for all the parts, not just the one.
If you don't have the feature in VCarve, you can also simply do a copy/translate on the vectors, add them into your toolpaths, and it will cut them too.
NOTE: Be wary and check your toolpaths to make sure the first part doesn't remove all of the rest of the material stock. Though usually that's easy to tell because it takes about forever to compute, and then makes a mess all over the displayed material.
The other way is to cut multiple parts from multiple pieces of similarly-sized stock. In that case, you'd just create a work stop in the form of a couple blocks of wood or similar, clamped to the bed/spoilboard. Then, the material is pressed against those registration surfaces and clamped into place, and you re-run the toolpaths.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Thom
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ThomR.com Creative tools and photographic art
A proud member of the Pacific Northwest CNC Club (now on Facebook)
ThomR.com Creative tools and photographic art
A proud member of the Pacific Northwest CNC Club (now on Facebook)
Re: wanting to cut multiple identical pieces
Thank You, I'll check and see. I am running Vcarve 6.5 right now. Should be able to upgrade to 8.5 soon.
Thank You Blane
Thank You Blane
Re: wanting to cut multiple identical pieces
If there's no array copy option, you could always copy and paste manually. Copy and paste a few in a row, then copy-paste those to make a longer row, then copy-paste your entire row to make several rows. It's the same thing, just a few minutes longer.