Just out of curiosity…how accurate is the Fusion 360 Machine time estimate usually? Just finished up a design that’s calling for about 4 hours. Is it typically pretty close?
Fusion bases its time estimates on the programmed feedrates. Depending on what speeds are entered in the program, it could be very close or completely off. This is because the Maslow’s feedrates are limited in all 3 directions. In X and Y, it’s 800 mm/min (~30 in/min), and in Z it’s even slower at 40 mm/min (~1.6 in/min). If you’ve programmed your feedrates with those max speeds in mind, it should be very close to the actual run time. Personally, I’ve found my Fusion estimates to be a little faster than my machine, but I rarely actually program the lower Z feedrates, mostly out of laziness.
The Maslow does tend to be a slower machine than most, especially when you’re cutting 3/4" thick material (or even thicker!). This is largely affected by your depth of cut, which tends to be pretty shallow compared to other machines. The slow max feedrate also plays a large role in that. Tool diameter can also have a large impact, especially if you have large pockets. I’ve had some pretty long programs before, I’ve commonly seen 3-4 hour run times on large nests of parts. I tend to break up those kinda programs to make them shorter when possible, where I only cut a few parts from the nest at a time.
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That’s what I was hoping to hear, I used 40"/min for some reason, but didn’t even think about the Z rate. This is my first try with F360 so I was just curious about it. I do love the 3D adaptive clearing though, we’ll see how it looks when I get around to running the program though.
Thank you for the information!
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I can’t comment on the accuracy relative to the Maslow but I can say that relative to a ShopBot PRSAlpha at the local maker space, I’ve calculated that I need to apply a time factor of about .53 to get it very close to accurate. That is to say, near as I can determine, my times are 47% longer than the base estimate Fusion would make.
I came to this number by recording the stock 1:1 estimated times for various jobs and manually recording the actual run times when I was at the machine and refining it over time. It isn’t perfect, as certain kinds of jobs have a lot more rapid time etc. but I can say its been reliably accurate over a typical multiple path job.
Best to do a similar comparison for your jobs and bits and rates and refine your adjustment factor.
-Jeff
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@JWoody18, I’m experiencing similar times as you. I think I’m applying a time factor of about .56 on average when compared to what Fusion tells me it’ll take.
what feed rate are you telling fusion to use?
k
@dlang I use 500mm/min. I think I could bump it up though, just not sure, still experimenting with settings.