Too many nodes

[M & N Steel CNC]

Will too many nodes cause heavy, hard to remove dross?

[Gamelord]

Usually, the nodes in your design will have zero effect on dross. Dross is caused by cut speed, condition of your consumables, plate thickness and torch height. If your nodes are all stop & start points, it could lead to a lot of dross plus will take much longer to cut the part out. Depending on your system, ramp up speed may vary which if you are stopping and starting on multiple nodes, could cause excessive dross. If it is just nodes along a singular arc or line, it shouldn't have any effect on dross.

[M & N Steel CNC]

Thanks.

[vmax549]

IF too many nodes slows down your feed rate and most time it will as the machine cannot keep up will all the accel/ deaccel with all the micro segmented code THEN it will effect the Dross problem as you are no longer running at programed feedrate. It also effects the THC control.

Try to create or modify artwork to have no more nodes than it takes to maintain the contour. A lot of art programs use lines instead of arcs and that creates a TON of nodes that the machine has to deal with.

A good CAM program will reduce the node count as much as possible and keep the the contour within reasonable tolerance.

Artwork can be much more tolerance than mechanical parts.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

[M & N Steel CNC]

Thanks, When I did the cut I never thought to look at the node count prior to cutting. I used files, that are generally very clean, it was after the cut, that it looked so horrible that I was trying to figure out why so much dross, we had installed an air dryer a couple weeks ago, I also put a new tip and electrode in, I was hoping to see a very clean piece and was disappointed and scratching my head. That was when I looked at the node count it was over 5,000, when I reduced it in corel it then was only 2,000. I learned the hard way . But I was still not sure that was the problem, just wanted some feedback from you experts, Thanks.