Whenever I am pocketing in Desck CNC I get jerky motor motion (the accel is way to fast when switching directions), causing my SERVO drivers to freeze up. Whe I turn countouring to 0 in machine setup, it works fine, but that takes 3-5 times longer to make cuts. (Regular "contour" cuts on the mill are fine, it just locks up when I pocket. Is there a way to tell Desk CNC to move slower when running pocketed .dnc files?????????????? Also, sometimes my keyboard jog arrows work and sometimes they don't--any ideas?

Thanks, David Wysen

Pocketing involves removing layers of material to a final Z depth. Within each layer, there are 2 kinds of motion 1) following the contours 2) moving between the "rings" of the contours.

The cutting conditions will be determined by many factors, including the tool condition, depth of cut, feed and speed, material, etc, etc, etc.

You usually have to balance the cut volume with the feed to achieve an efficient removal rate. Do this by adjusting the depth of cut ( Z-step size in DeskCNC pocketing), and the step over distance ( X-Y stepover in DeskCNC). It's a good idea to try a series of different cutting conditions to see what is possible with your machine, material, cutter, spindle, etc. If the machine is tuned to rapid with the servos while cutting air with multiple axis moves, you need to determine the max values that you can safely program to stay within the allowable envelope of the motors and cutting conditions. Run your tests at 100% feed rate to avoid complications that may be caused by leaning on the feed rate overide slider.

Fred Smith - IMService
http://www.cadcamcadcam.com/hobby

Clarification: I am not attempting to cut anything right now, just air/just testing. I also want to say that all my servos are working good when I select contour, just not when I select pocket. I would assume that all the accel profiles I set would apply to both contouriong AND pocketing operations. And if not, why not? Why do the profiles work in contour but not in pocket? (PS> The servos are crashing when x and y change--nothing to do with z or the plunge rate!) I will try to play with it but so far I am not really impressed with switching to servos--my steppers never had issues and can pocket no problem...

Can you post a screen shot of your machine velocities settings for us to have a look at. There is no real reason for this to be happening. If it is a problem, it should be happening on any change of direction, pocketing or general contouring.

The problem with the jog keys working sometimes and not others is actually not a problem. It is a safety feature intended to be there. The reason it is happening is because you were using the mouse pointer to jog the machine and then tried to use your keyboard. What DeskCNC does, is once you start using your mouse to jog, it locks out your keyboard jog function so you don't run the risk of bumping the keyboard accidentally. All you need to do to activate the keys again is select your feed speed again ie: Fast, Medium, Slow, etc and your keys will be active again.