I am too cheap to just toss it in the garbage.
Iām too stubborn to lose a fight against a roll of tape
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So Iām standing in front of the Altmill, watching what the Altmill does and Iām thinking to myself, āthere sure is a lot of wasted movement as the spindle goes over the bump that has already been cutā. Then it dawns on me that I saw an option in vCarve called āAvoid Machined areasā. Well, I recalculated the toolpath to see how much time it would save. Geez, half the time for this particular carve (from 4 hours to 2 hours). Too late now to apply for this carve but will definitely use it for the next.
FWIW, vCarve says 4 hours but gSender says 2. And by the looks of it, it will be less than that. I could likely have done it in 1 hour with the āAvoid Machined areasā setting. Lesson learned.
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Roughing done. Pretty sure I could have done it under 1 hour if done with the right settings and feeds and speeds.
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Done. Finish pass took 2 hours. I had configured two end mills for the finish pass. First a 1/4" BN, the second a 1/4" TBN. But after seeing the results of the BN with a 5% stepover , I decided not to do the TBN pass.
Excluding cutting the inner and outer diameter, this took 4 hours but could have been done in 3 with a properly configured roughing toolpath. vCarve estimates were twice as long as gSender estimates. gSender was close to actual cut time. I donāt know why vCarve is way off since it should simply be a mathematical calculation based on the the shape, the cutter parameters, and the feed speeds.
I think Iām reasonably happy to keep this one and use the maple for something else. Now I just need to finish itā¦which is the part I like the least.
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Very nice! How did you end up cutting the outside and inside?
The inside I was able to do with the mill. The outside still has about 1/4" that I need to remove. Iāll use the router.
Nicenicenice! That is turning out pretty smooth.
Runtime in vcarve can be tweaked. I am mostly using 2D toolpaths and in the beginning vcarves estimates were way off too, untill I discovered somewhere, somehow, that the scale factor could be tweaked and was set at 2 (double the estimate.). For me at 1, its perty accurate, most of the time.
Well wadda you know, it was set at 2 for me as well. Much better with a factor of 1. I wonder why 2 is the default. Kinda discouraging when you plan a project it it looks like itās going to take a few weeks to complete. Thanks for that!
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I guess the team is having worst case in mind. Not everbody has an Altbeast. Some of us have a looooooooooooooooongmill or worse, all using vcarve. Predicting longer machine times seems bad , but predicting shorter machine times maybe unexeptable.
I would be on the safe side too, if I didnāt know the machine it was going to be used on.
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Good points. I guess itās my fault for not RTFM 
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@Chucky_ott My experience is the opposite of yours. The VCarve times are good. The gSender times are not even close - especially in rotary. gSender will often show time remaining in days! VCarve has gotten much better since you can now input your acceleration rates. Thatās a big issue with 3D carves since the issue has always been that VCarve did not accommodate the Z axis movements well. So, the times for 3D roughing and finishing passes were not accurately calculated.
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Final product. Much darker than I wanted but that is a result of an oopsies. I knew pine would be difficult to stain without being blotchy so I opted to spray aniline dye. I have a brown walnut which looked good with the first coat but then a large drop of dye fell off my sprayer onto the workpiece. Bad technique in my part and there was no way to fix it except to apply more dye to the entire piece. Still looks nice with our colour scheme and certainly good enough for the cottage bathroom. Another lesson learnedā¦place your piece vertically when spraying with this particular gun.
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Looks great! If the darkness bothers you too much, could you apply some sort of bleaching material to lighten things up or would that more than likely mess up the entire project?
Iām not proficient enough with finishing techniques to even try. My daughter lovingly said it looks like a chocolate cruller.
I actually wanted a dark colour but got vetoed by the three women in my life. Maybe I did it on purpose.