Multistep CNC Carving

Hi is there a way to divide cnc carving into several steps? What I mean is that I roughly mill with a spherical cutter, for example, and only then finish with a V-cutter?
so that processing times can be reduced

thanks

I made a guide for using Fusion 360 for this here: Fusion 360 Guide For 3D Engrave

Theoretically setting up the first operation in Luban and setting an “Allowance” in the toolpath setting should work. i.e. set an allowance of 0.5, do a roughing pass with a larger tool like the 3.175mm flat end mill, then another pass with allowance of 0 to do the finish with a v-bit. Do keep in mind, Luban is not a very powerful CAM program, you’ll have to set your finish stepdown deep to do a single finish run, else it’ll air cut the full time anyway, at the same time, this means you can’t really control how deep the V bit cuts on areas with more leftover material and may break the tip. You’ll just have to do some testing.

2 Likes

Hi @m0rra,
actually that’s rather typical to proceed this way. I never tried to use Luban for generating CNC milling GCode, I use Fusion 360, and there you can easily define multiple tool pathes to achieve what you just described. In Fusion, you select a coarse tool for the roughing path, and Fusion calculates the path so that the tool gets away what it can, and then you select a finer tool and redo the path, and Fusion will again calculate the path so that it takes away what is possible whith that tool and so on, until you reached the level of detail you are aiming for and your milling bits allow for.

2 Likes

Thank you guys (@Skreelink @Hauke ) for your answers
i will try it