Vectric crazy pocket strategies..

Am I the only one to consider vectric pocketing strategies awful?

I was playing around with Aspire and tried some pockets and here are the results:

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The tool enters 3/7 times through material for one pocket. No option to keep the tool down in the pocket.

I have to choose between climb and conventional. But what if I don't care about the direction (or I'll have a finishing pass anyway) and I only want a fast and efficient toolpath?

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What about this last part of the toolpath? I can imagine this thin edge being cut in acrylic... or the sound it makes if cut in foam.

The triangle has even more situations like this:

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I switched from Vectric Cut2D to Fusion 360 some time ago, meaning to do a gradual transition.

But the first time I used F360 I got some nice toolpaths and cut the part out successfully. I've never looked back or even fired up Vectric since and have explored quite a lot of F360 now. It's free for non-commercial use, and with plenty of YouTube demo videos (e.g. NYCCNC).

Same here - I used Cut2D and Cut3D extensively when I started out machining and whilst they get you going quickly, there are some quirks, which to my mind are down right ruinous to cutters and work pieces.

The 3D finishing passes using ballnose cutters are a prime example, where it will take plunge cuts on a whim on steep edges and then mill out at whatever depth that plunge goes to. You can get away with such things in wood mostly, but aluminium results in snapped or welded tools.

Fusion 360's CAM whilst not quite as good as Solidworks and iMachining (OK quite a long way off in terms of adaptive/trochoidal clearing configuration) does at least have enough strategies and "intelligence" to get most jobs done quickly.

That said I still use Cut2D to convert PDF guitar plans into .dxf before importing into Fusion, so that still has a place in my software "toolbox".

Oh another CAM package I still use for intricate 3D carving is DeskProto, as it can handle high polygon stl files and Fusion just refuses to do those properly with anything approaching 8-9000 polygons (it doesn't like the triangle format, which is a bit bizarre as triangle polys are the lowest common denominator in computer 3D rendering...).

Had a similar issue myself doing this part in alloy, I normally just cut carbon.

But same 3-4 times it just moves and plunges in, although steady ramps gets the job done without any issues.

I machined this with a single flute 3mm carbide tool, materials 10mm thick 4mm deep pockets.

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You can not compare Aspire to proper CAM. Aspire is for sign making and similar stuff like V carving, Simple 3d jobs, etc. There it shines. On proper CAM there is more control, but you need to know what are you doing. What i do in Aspire for 10 min could take me an hour or so to program in NX11, and vice versa, depending on the job. Believe me, you need only half an hour or more to browse the toolpath options in NX and if you are not sure what sth means it could take hours to figure things out.

ESTLCAM is simple and nice and honestly i use it many times for the pocketing especially

Not too sure AVG joe is going to fork out for NX11 sometimes it's just make do with what you have, well I do and it works.

That part above takes 44 mins to machine, could half that easy with better tool paths.

I don't like how you can't keep constant engagement of the tool when cutting pockets.