2 Tips to save time on batch toolpaths
How to save time on large batch toolpaths by using the merge toolpath feature and by changing your rapid z height. This lesson applies to Vectric VCarve, Aspire, and Cut2D. However, the merge toolpath features will not work with Cut2D Desktop or VCarve Desktop, they will only work with the Pro versions.
Want to learn more??
Click the link below to take your Vectric skills to the next level!
Video Transcript:
Hello everyone. In this quick tip, I'm gonna show you how to speed up your toolpathing if you're creating multiple parts like you see here. So this is a project I helped a student with and he was having these little parts he was making, but he had to make a bunch of them. And the nice thing is he was using the same tool for all of the operations.
So there's a lot of pocket cutouts and then a final profile cutout to cut out the shape. So he had all the toolpaths as single toolpaths like you normally would when you set them up. So if I reset this preview and let's look at this one by one. So the first toolpath would go ahead and cut all these first pockets.
So as you could see, it does the entire sheet for all of those parts. As that one operation, and then it would come back to the beginning and do the next operation, which is that little slot there, and then he has another slot. So as you can see, each time it does one of these operations, it will be a little bit more time consuming by going back to the beginning and going through the entire sheet again.
So let's go through the rest of these. The next will be this whole cutout, then a slot around the hole, and then the final profile cutout to cut the shapes out. And if we look at our time of how much time this will take, this is saying about four hours to cut all these parts. And you could see he did have his safety height pretty high to avoid some clamps.
So that can be lowered and that will save us some more time as well. But you could see all these red lines at the top. Those are all the rapid movements, and that is when it raises up from one toolpath and then goes to the next one. Each one of those is called a rapid movement to the next part. And all of those movements are not cutting anything up there.
So that is just wasting time moving around your project area. So what we're gonna do is actually combine all of these toolpaths together since they're using the same tool except for the profile cutout. And I'll show you why we do that. So I'm going to deselect the profile cutout and have all of the other toolpaths selected.
And then we're gonna use this option that's called Merge toolpath. Now unfortunately, if you're using a desktop version of the software, you're not gonna have this option. But if you're using Cut2D Pro, VCarve Pro or Aspire, you will have this option. So let's select that, and you'll see at the top list it'll say toolpaths to be merged.
And that's all the ones we have selected. And this will only work if we're using the same tool, which in this case we are. It's all a quarter inch endmill. And then you can select what order you want these to carve in. So you can select any of these you want. You can select multiple or none of these even. But if you select multiple of these, they will go in the directions that you select, and the software will try to get it in the most efficient way possible.
Now the important part here, we want to check this where it says Merge by part. That will do all the Toolpath operations we selected per each part before it moves on to the next part. So with that selected, we can give it a name if you want, and then click merge toolpaths. And you'll see now in the Toolpath list, all of your original toolpaths are still there, but now they are all grouped together in this single merge toolpath.
And now when you look at these red rapid movement lines at the top. You could see there's much less of those lines. And by having less rapid movements, that is gonna speed up your machining time. And if you're doing big batching jobs like this, you're gonna want to save time on machining. So now let's reset our preview, and this time we're gonna preview just this merged toolpath, which is gonna do all these together.
So I'm gonna slow the speed down a little bit. And click preview selected, and we'll see down here it's gonna do that pocket and then the rest of the operations, and then it's gonna move to the next part. So now you can see, instead of going through the entire sheet per each toolpath, it's doing each part all together at once.
And that is what the merge toolpath option will do, and that's gonna save us lots of time. So let's speed this up, we'll cycle through all of that. And like I mentioned before, we did not merge the profile toolpath with that. We could have done that, but I don't recommend doing it because each time it goes through one, it's gonna cut that part loose, and then by the time you get part way through the sheet, it might make the sheet a little bit weak, where all those cutouts are.
Now you can add tabs if you wanted to to help that, but you still might not want to cut those profiles out until last. That's generally what I like to do. So now after that merge toolpath ran for all of these parts. We can go to that profile cutout and I'll slow down the speed a little bit and click preview, and then it would come back and cut out all of the parts. And you could still add tabs to this if you like to hold them all in place.
But As you could see, that will cycle through all the parts, and then after that's done, you would have your completed parts. And then we could double click on the waste and there is the remaining parts. Okay, so let's see how much time we saved by doing that merge toolpath option. So we're gonna go to the summary of all toolpaths and it did cut down a few minutes of machining time.
Which isn't all that great of saving, but it definitely does make more sense cutting it in that method. And these were all pretty simple pocket cutouts, so that's why it didn't save too awful much time. But if you had more complex toolpaths, this will generally cut down a lot of time. The other big time saver we can do in this project is by changing the rapid height here.
If we close this out and go to the material setup, you could see he had it set to four inches, which is quite large. I would set that more to maybe a half of an inch. Just gotta make sure it's not gonna run into any of your clamps or anything if you have it on there. So now we'll click okay, and then we are going to recalculate all of the toolpaths and you'll see how much lower those rapid heights are.
So now let's look at our time. And there we go, that shaved off about an hour. So sometimes just changing those little settings like that will save you tons of time. And you just need to set that rapid height just high enough to raise up your tool to go to the next part. If you set it up way too high, you're just wasting a lot of time moving up and down.
So he had it set to four inches. So just by moving up and then to the next part and then down, that's eight inches of travel up and down that is wasted on not doing anything. So you wanna make it as low as you can. That way it saves you as much time as possible. And like I said, this was a project I helped one of my students with and he really liked that tip, so I figured you guys would too.
So if it helped you out, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
So there's a lot of pocket cutouts and then a final profile cutout to cut out the shape. So he had all the toolpaths as single toolpaths like you normally would when you set them up. So if I reset this preview and let's look at this one by one. So the first toolpath would go ahead and cut all these first pockets.
So as you could see, it does the entire sheet for all of those parts. As that one operation, and then it would come back to the beginning and do the next operation, which is that little slot there, and then he has another slot. So as you can see, each time it does one of these operations, it will be a little bit more time consuming by going back to the beginning and going through the entire sheet again.
So let's go through the rest of these. The next will be this whole cutout, then a slot around the hole, and then the final profile cutout to cut the shapes out. And if we look at our time of how much time this will take, this is saying about four hours to cut all these parts. And you could see he did have his safety height pretty high to avoid some clamps.
So that can be lowered and that will save us some more time as well. But you could see all these red lines at the top. Those are all the rapid movements, and that is when it raises up from one toolpath and then goes to the next one. Each one of those is called a rapid movement to the next part. And all of those movements are not cutting anything up there.
So that is just wasting time moving around your project area. So what we're gonna do is actually combine all of these toolpaths together since they're using the same tool except for the profile cutout. And I'll show you why we do that. So I'm going to deselect the profile cutout and have all of the other toolpaths selected.
And then we're gonna use this option that's called Merge toolpath. Now unfortunately, if you're using a desktop version of the software, you're not gonna have this option. But if you're using Cut2D Pro, VCarve Pro or Aspire, you will have this option. So let's select that, and you'll see at the top list it'll say toolpaths to be merged.
And that's all the ones we have selected. And this will only work if we're using the same tool, which in this case we are. It's all a quarter inch endmill. And then you can select what order you want these to carve in. So you can select any of these you want. You can select multiple or none of these even. But if you select multiple of these, they will go in the directions that you select, and the software will try to get it in the most efficient way possible.
Now the important part here, we want to check this where it says Merge by part. That will do all the Toolpath operations we selected per each part before it moves on to the next part. So with that selected, we can give it a name if you want, and then click merge toolpaths. And you'll see now in the Toolpath list, all of your original toolpaths are still there, but now they are all grouped together in this single merge toolpath.
And now when you look at these red rapid movement lines at the top. You could see there's much less of those lines. And by having less rapid movements, that is gonna speed up your machining time. And if you're doing big batching jobs like this, you're gonna want to save time on machining. So now let's reset our preview, and this time we're gonna preview just this merged toolpath, which is gonna do all these together.
So I'm gonna slow the speed down a little bit. And click preview selected, and we'll see down here it's gonna do that pocket and then the rest of the operations, and then it's gonna move to the next part. So now you can see, instead of going through the entire sheet per each toolpath, it's doing each part all together at once.
And that is what the merge toolpath option will do, and that's gonna save us lots of time. So let's speed this up, we'll cycle through all of that. And like I mentioned before, we did not merge the profile toolpath with that. We could have done that, but I don't recommend doing it because each time it goes through one, it's gonna cut that part loose, and then by the time you get part way through the sheet, it might make the sheet a little bit weak, where all those cutouts are.
Now you can add tabs if you wanted to to help that, but you still might not want to cut those profiles out until last. That's generally what I like to do. So now after that merge toolpath ran for all of these parts. We can go to that profile cutout and I'll slow down the speed a little bit and click preview, and then it would come back and cut out all of the parts. And you could still add tabs to this if you like to hold them all in place.
But As you could see, that will cycle through all the parts, and then after that's done, you would have your completed parts. And then we could double click on the waste and there is the remaining parts. Okay, so let's see how much time we saved by doing that merge toolpath option. So we're gonna go to the summary of all toolpaths and it did cut down a few minutes of machining time.
Which isn't all that great of saving, but it definitely does make more sense cutting it in that method. And these were all pretty simple pocket cutouts, so that's why it didn't save too awful much time. But if you had more complex toolpaths, this will generally cut down a lot of time. The other big time saver we can do in this project is by changing the rapid height here.
If we close this out and go to the material setup, you could see he had it set to four inches, which is quite large. I would set that more to maybe a half of an inch. Just gotta make sure it's not gonna run into any of your clamps or anything if you have it on there. So now we'll click okay, and then we are going to recalculate all of the toolpaths and you'll see how much lower those rapid heights are.
So now let's look at our time. And there we go, that shaved off about an hour. So sometimes just changing those little settings like that will save you tons of time. And you just need to set that rapid height just high enough to raise up your tool to go to the next part. If you set it up way too high, you're just wasting a lot of time moving up and down.
So he had it set to four inches. So just by moving up and then to the next part and then down, that's eight inches of travel up and down that is wasted on not doing anything. So you wanna make it as low as you can. That way it saves you as much time as possible. And like I said, this was a project I helped one of my students with and he really liked that tip, so I figured you guys would too.
So if it helped you out, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
