I can not figure out why my xcarve is doing what it’s doing… I designed in aspire, exported toolpath with xcarve mm, setup my piece, zeroed all 3 axis, start roughing, first pass is not perfect, but decent, but I leave for an hour right around the end of the first pass because everything looks to be working… Come back, router is bottomed out in the wasteboard, clamps all gave up, board I’m cutting is tattered and cut through in multiple spots, and twisted way out of position (from clamps giving up trying to hold my wood down), 1/4 in endmill is burnt and dull beyond use…
All of this after I triple checked Aspire and set and saved the pass depth at .02 inches… This isn’t the first, second, or 3rd time it’s crashed like this… (hence the tiny pass depth)
So I would like someone (just has to be someone who is successful with their xcarve) to come give it all a look-see and see what the heck I’m doing wrong. Will pay for gas and grill you a juicy steak, I’ll even get beer if you want it (I don’t drink)
If I had the finances right now, I’d pay… But a little tight.
Steppers are calibrated will check v-wheels
Speed was 1 1/2 feed was 120 ipm
think it burnt more from drilling through the board then running against the same area (was in a hole aand when x or y moved, moved whole board)
I couple of thoughts.
First you may be having a mm vs inches issue
If you are designing in inches in Aspire than you want to be using the “x_carve (inch)” post processor.
Also you may want to also edit your post processor.
There is a “T1M6” command in the header that can cause weird things to happen sometimes.
(This is a tool change command, that doesn’t actual do anything as we don’t have a automatic tool changer. I think this is done to document what bit was used in the cut file in case you reference it later?)
I also like to add a “G90” to the header to insure that the cut file is ran in absolute addressing mode.
Second double check your Z axis wiring, settings and current calibration. One way the Z axis can get to deep is that it does not lift up when it is supposed to, so it just keeps going down. At some point the depth of cut becomes too much and things go bad.
Take a look at your clamps. Double check that the work piece is not breaking loose first and then causing all the other problems.
Are you using a dust shoe? I have had mine snag on a clamp and screw everything up.
Thank you for the tips. Both you and Phil have given me a lot to check… But from your advice… I’m going to lean towards the fact that I edit in inches then export in mm. I’ve caught the T1M6 command (and actually swapped it out with g90)… But I didn’t know to export with the inches post processor.
I will update you when I have the chance to get out to my shop.
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Hey Chad,
I’m in the Columbus area and just set up everything this past week. If you are still having problems I may be able to help out. I am still a novice to this but can give it the college try.
I may have figured it out… the z had a little slack due to the wheels not being tight enough, and the acme screw had worked loose a bit… all tightened up, and no movement if I jiggle it… That, and I still have to try using the correct post processor when exporting out of Aspire.
