Machining strategy

[ljdm]

A lot of the signs, plaques I do involve raised carvings - text and or reliefs, usually a .25 -.3 height. I have been doing a rough pass with either a 1/4" or 1/8" end mill with .001 tolerance and .01 allowance, then a finish pass with a 1/16" tapered ballnose with 0 allowance, 0 tolerance. Needless to say, on even a 24" x 12" sign, takes a long time(longer still - on a PR).
Reason - can't seem to get the hang of rest machining/feature machining. Any hints, help, etc? Thanks

[garyb]

Tolerance sets how closely it will follow curves just leave it at default setting.
Machine rest works on the simulation of the created toolpaths. After doing your toolpaths click on machine rest select to simulate all toolpaths, when it finishes it will create a new layer with the selected vectors that needs to be machined.

run a toolpath on those selected vectors. If a new layer is not created with vectors then there is nothing more to machine from that simulation.