What does orbiting do?

I am using skeinforge and feed its GCode to Linux EMC to my RepStrap.

During the print, I saw the machine walking around the boundary of the object without extruding. I think it's the "orbiting" mentioned in the doc? (I don't know what does it mean yet)

What the purpose of doing orbiting?

From the skeinforge help files (in the cool section)

"The important value for the cool preferences is "Minimum Layer Time (seconds)" which is the minimum amount of time the
extruder will spend on a layer. If it takes less time to extrude the layer than the minimum layer time, cool adds orbits with the
extruder off to give the layer time to cool, so that the next layer is not extruded on a molten base. The orbits will be around the
largest island on that layer. If the area of the largest island is as large as the square of the "Minimum Orbital Radius" then the
orbits will be just within the island. If the island is smaller, then the orbits will be in a square of the "Minimum Orbital Radius"
around the center of the island."

Seems pretty set for me.

I don't know what the answer is, but it is more complicated than cooling time. If you make something small, and set along cooling time, it will do something like orbit, but it will also do it with larger prints. There may be two things going on. You can turn off 'orbiting' on large things by turning off the comb function. I think that it may have something to do with wiping the tip.

Frank Davies