Hi,
rainharvester wrote: ↑Tue Nov 20, 2018 3:45 pm
With array, you can drill all the holes for 100 parts, then move all over your workpiece to go back and cut every part out). In the shop, this means that if the machine loses a step or crashes etc, then you lost all your material. You also can't inspect (start to polish etc) any single part until all the holes are drilled.
Sorry, but this sounds inconclusive to me...
If you want to make a serie of parts like you described you have to do a toolchange between drilling and milling, rawing and finish milling. If you do that 20 times (for 20 parts) you are losing some more more time.
If your machine loses steps, you have to aprove your machine setup and if the machine chrashes the few bucks for the material are usualy the smallest problem. But on both is the problem the machine, not the path.
Inspecting or taking out a part of a still running machine, sorry again, bat that's only stupid... Especially if your machine is reliable as you described above.
Edit: But i'm with you: For "one tool work" it would be nice if it were possible copy or array to apply to operations...