Thought that I would show a small job that I have run through using the tiling function in Vcarve Pro, which is a little different. I mostly use Vcarve for engraving and quick 2.5 machining as it quick, compared to Sprutcam. Anyway it has a function called 'Tiling' which won't probably be new to a lot of the guys that do wood working, as I think it is used pretty commonly used for small bed machines. But what it does is allow you to do the whole of the CAM work and then setup, tiles in either X, Y, or individual; then when you go to produce the Gcode it breaks it all up into separate tiles and you can move your job around for job's that exceed your bed length or width.
Here I am making the first arm for a table that I am building for the end of my mill so that I can store my 4th Axis and then roll it onto my bed without the need to become a human crane!
I could have probably simplified the programing so that it had the minimum of cuts but I thought that I would give it a try in the middle of a pocket too see how it handled it. The job came out better than expected given that when you do this it reduces the functionality.
Basically I found you loose the following:
(1) Ramping - it seemed to do it only once where the job would have started if it wasn't tiled, this was a bit of an issue for the broken pocket
(2) Leads - Same with the leads, only one per job
This meant that it required a bit of hand holding and you weren't able to run the cutters hard, as you had to reduce to rates to compensate. Apart from the plunge marks where I couldn't ramp in at on arc it came up pretty well I had a slight lip in one section (see photo) I think this was due to lack of work holding on the front side, in hind sight I should have put two screws in the small holes to the left to hold it down - lip is 0.004".
My plan here is to move the x axis to its limit, open the left hand window of the cabinet and use the heavy duty draw slide to extend up to the edge of table. Then I should be able to slide the a axis off using the 'ball transfer units' as a low friction surface to move the 4th on and off with ease ... that's the hope anyway!
Will probably have to re-enforce the cabinet slightly to take the weight.
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Tiling for larger jobs
