In trying to do some 4-axis carving, it’s becomming increasingly obvious to me that the current Luban method of depth first, then along the Y axis is fundamentally flawed. Why? it removes all strength of the support of the tailstock before it removes anything but the first path of material! If you go the other way, it removes all support of the headstock first. As a “strength of the material” thing, wouldn’t it be better to do the first depth of cut around the circumference, then repeat, travelling along the Y (similar to a conventional metal lathe), and then repeat at the next depth of cut, etc.
It would also make restarting (due to broken bit, etc), much quicker, as you could speed up the job to 500 percent until it gets close to back where it was (my restart, event though it wound back to 0 degrees, was some 30 degrees off, meaning it’s cutting a lot it shouldn’t on the restart, but that’s a separate issue).
Has anyone else thought this?
Is there a magic option I’m missing?
Is there a good technical reason it does depth on each pass first before stepping over?