Hi there! First time post, and very new. I have:
XCarve 1000, ACME, 24v spindle, NEMA 23’s. Running VCarve Pro. I am doing a simple sign on a 20mm thick piece of material.
I set home with UGS. When the job kicks off it seems to go to the proper starting position from home, but then it starts cutting down at an angle, gets to about 6mm below the surface and seems to get “stuck”. I pause the job and then kill the power, thinking something isn’t right. The X/Y motors seem to be suffering. So I’m thinking it’s too deep into the wood to cut any more. I’ve not had a “real run” at a pocket so I’m not sure what proper behavior is.
I’m not sure where it’s getting stuck so I might not have shown enough GCode. Thanks so much for any help!
I had to paste photos because UGS isn’t letting me copy the commands… On a MAC FWIW.
Under “cutting depths,” what are the advanced options?
It may be as simple as removing the T1 from the G-Code.
Thanks Nathan! I have two, a pocket and a profile. The profile is first:
Thanks Erik! What is T1 anyhow?
Your pocket shows 1 pass to clear it out at a depth of 5mm. That is way too deep for the depth of cut. Which is why your bit is plunging into the material.
The T1 shows tool number 1 and may cause issues with UGS and the GRBL controller (and is not necessary).
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What Erik said. One pass should be increased. More pars means a shallower depth of cut, but also a longer running time, so play with that number but don’t go crazy with it.
The general rule of thumb is no more then half the diameter of the bit for a depth of cut…so 1.5mm…but that all depends on the material being cut, type of bit…etc…
Wow! Thank you guys for this great information! So, in my design, I want a pocket to be 5mm deep, so the letters on my sign “stick out” from the pocket about 5mm. I took “Cut Depth” to mean that’s how deep the pocket would be. Oops.
So to summarize, if I want a 5mm pocket with a 3mm bit, I set depth of cut to 1.5mm, and the passes to 3, to get to a total depth of 4.5mm? Something like that?
Here’s my silly sign by the way. It’s not creative, but the machine was donated to us here in Uganda, and is in our leather shop right now. The donor tried unsuccessfully to make a “Leather Shop” sign for us, and I’m trying to make it for him in his honor. 
cut depth is the depth of the pocket…you want to edit the passes to be more like 1.5mm a pass…you can just say 4 passes in number of passes…that is a tiny bit it will take a while.
The Z value for the Home/Start position can cause the machine to miss calculate height moves. A sure check is spindle moves to top of z limit and continues up.
