Shaper Origin AutoPass Pocketing

Adaptive tool path as on-line cut combined with the new AutoPass extension to cut a 3/8” deep 1-1/4” diameter pocket in Gaboon Ebony with a stubby Lee Valley 1/4” diameter single flute cutter

[@jimtaylor4103]

So, back to the actual topic, Devin what is your take on the effectiveness? I was under the impression that auto pass did not do pockets, so was surprised by your video. The autopass cut looked convoluted to me, if I knew my final offset, in cherry I'm pretty sure that I could make this cut in less than 60 seconds, even with a several depth settings. For this cut, it looked like you had about 6 depth adjustments (just off the top of my head remembering back to the original screen view on the setup), was that auto-calculated based upon your first inputted depth and the total cut depth set on the pocket? Do you perceive any value for auto pass so far?

[@devinteske]

AutoPass will traverse on-line cuts. Inkscape has a spiral tool. I drew a spiral and adjusted the parameters so that a 0.250” stroke overlapped. Then I fused the spiral with a circle. Then I closed the path with a straight line back to the center of the spiral. If the cut looked convoluted that is because I created it from joining a spiral to a perfect circle. The reason it takes so long to cut the pocket is because I told Shaper Origin to perform enough passes to limit the depth of cut per-pass to 1/16” or less because I am cutting Ebony. If I tried to go much deeper than that per-pass, the router started to pull because the Ebony is so hard. In cherry I bet such a small (1-1/4” diameter) pocket (3/8” deep) could have been done in less than 60s as cherry is much softer than Ebony. I would have pressed the minus button in the AutoPass settings until the cut depth per pass was about 1/8”, significantly reducing the number of passes required to reach the bottom of the pocket. I think AutoPass is worth the money and I hope to unlock even more potential. Every woodworker has tricks they develop and ways they like to work. I like to do 2 finishing passes at different depths as I get close to breaking through to the spoilboard (I don’t use tabs). Figuring out how to use AutoPass with that workflow is a bit challenging but I think I have some ideas by using a global offset of .005” and on the 2nd-to-last pass, retract, remove global offset, then resume, and also setting the encoded depth to 25-thou over material thickness. Still have more playing to do, but so far it has allowed me to get more done in less time, which is making me forget about the $200 I set aside for it (which I was allowed to keep but have not used or allowed myself to use yet, as I was going to pay for it but then won it in a random drawing)

[@littlewolfwoodworking]

@@devinteske Clever. I was looking at that cut path and wondering how Shaper came up with that complex path, didn't realize at the time that you were gaming the system (I like it). Right now I have some projects that are .6" deep cutting .1" per circuit (0.125 bit), with 6 parts per 6x12" board, it is quite a few cuts (36 actually). I jump from part to part without adjusting the depth more than once, so I have doubted that auto-pass would be faster, I'm pretty sure that I am pushing the cut speeds close to the limits of the Origin/bit. When done, I am pretty wiped out.