Hi,
I am relatively new to CNC hobby. I recently acquired CNC router, mill and lathe. I managed to create few carving projects on mill and router table made few test cuts on lathe. I think I am ready to move to more complex mltipart part assemblies/projects. Still working on wood and plan to move to Al once I have more knowledge/experience.

I got lot of help during my build and during first phase of CNC learning process from Zone. I think I am in better shape when it comes to cad/cam due to my background and fact that I can do all the work in horizontal position but we will see ... I will bee using autocad and inventorcam for design and tool path generation. Of course I do have Mach3 and am also using GWizard.

First issue ... I am able to do regular pocketing, pocket recognition, HSS and any other classic cutting operation on inventorcam but have some difficulty with iMachining. For a very simple profile operation 1) tool path computation take much longer compared to other operations 2) looking at simulation data, it seems that iMachining do take hours when comparative regular pocketing operation takes only minutes. I thought purpose of iMachining was to increase the tool life and decrease the machining time. I must be missing something here. Any idea on where to start trouble shooting? In my tests I am using machining level 2 for imachining technology wizard, I know changing this will make the difference but I do not have much experience with machines I have and want to be careful in the initial phase.

I will also be posting pictures of my projects on this thread to get constructive feedback. Hope to attract couple of more experienced folks to contribute to this thread as well.

Lets fun begin ...

Regards,