3 part question - What is the best way to calibrate X Axis?

I have owned my xcarve for about a month…
Only ran a few projects on it so far…

  1. What is the best way to calibrate the X Axis. I have noticed my carvings are heavy close to X0 by the time I get to X30 inches the carving is not even scratching the surface. I plan on running an indicator across the waste board from the spindle head to see the drop. The first time I saw it, I thought it was me or my material. Now I am seeing repeat-ability.

  2. Also what is the best way to manually jog the machine. I found a work around, using the carve function in Easel and stopping at the set home screen to jog the machine around. Is that the best way to jog when not carving?

  3. Is there a way to offset a zplane cut to re-run tool path again just say deeper by .010 inch? Without setting depth on each object? Can you cheat the material thickness and run again? I would think that would work, but if you use a probe that would negate the material adjustment…

Thanks,
Tim

The way I calibrate my machine is use a digital caliper or digital dial caliper and execute a standard movement. For instance, with a 6" digital caliper, I’ll have the machine jog 6" and then clamp a caliper to the spindle gantry somewhere and have it against a fixed position on the wasteboard. Just make sure you the caliper or dial indicator parallel to the axis for the highest accuracy. Then use the numbers to calibrate. With a dial caliper I’m usually moving the spindle around 1", but with a greater degree of accuracy over the shorter distance. If I’m machining something where deflection and material hardness might affect my numbers, I’ll use a 1" calibration pocket and adjust my machine to that.

based on what you’re saying, I think you mean calibrating the Z-axis, as that would directly effect the depth of cut. Either way, both will work.

if you come in light on an engraving and you want more depth, keep the same X/Y zero, and select manual instead of probe for your Z axis, and bury the bit however much deeper you want the cut.

1 - Skim cut your waste board. This ensure that the Z (height) is parallell to the X & Y plane.
2 - Use the Carve jog commands to move about. Do you have homing switches installed?
3 -You can re-zero Z to a new reference and run the carve again. Cheating by changing material depth will not work. The easiest and most consistent is to change the depth in the design by say 0.010" and rerun using “Use previous home” position.

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