Possibly a faster way? New guy here

Hey All! First timer over here and I’m trying to make a tray but it says it will take 45 minutes to complete. I figured with the right bit this would only take a few minutes. Any help on the type of bit would be great. At the moment I’m using a 90 degree Vbit on a normal xcarve machine. (Dewalt 611 on speed 1)

I have attached a picture of what I’m currently cutting.

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You can use a 1/8" upcut bit or if you have a 1/4" you can use it. The vbit is more of a detail style bit. They are not really for milling out a large pocket altough it can be done but is time consuming.

Do you know the name of this bit and it it works with easel? Sorry for the bad picture, I saw it on a Facebook ad

Easel can’t generate a design with that bit, unlike what it can do with a v-bit. You can still do simple cuts with a bit like that, but you need to understand how to “trick” Easel into doing what you want. For anything sophisiticated, you would need to use more advanced software like V-Carve or Fusion 360.

With a 1/4” end mill that should pocket very quickly (assuming that pocket’s corners are >=1/4”. A 1/4” generally will cut 2x a 1/8, etc (you can of course alter that by the step over percentage). But that should go quite quickly with a 1/4” tool. Then use the v-bit to chamfer the edges (finishing in easel terminology, or a chamfer pass in v-carve/fusion terms)

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Bowl bit.
Easel do not compute based on bowl / ball geometry (it disregard the radius).
Will still work though but YOU need to be tool path brain :slight_smile:

The main reason for the long estimated cut time with a V-bit is the step-over which is 5% by default. With a fine tip 5% isnt much => a lot of tool path.

My take on such a carve, based on Easel:

  • Hog out the main pocket with a 1/4" flat bit
  • Do a separate contour operation with the V-bit or ballnose bit, fudging the contour size to give me desired chamfer at the desired loaction.
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