I have seen several posts with objects carving in the wrong place but most of them are 3+ years old.
I just put my 1000mm xCarve together a couple weeks ago. I created an SVG file in Corrl Draw and imported it into Easel. I Homed the xCarve, secured the board to the washboard, used the probe to set top of material, set the start position to the lower left corner of the board, and started carving. The entire image is shifted up and to the right about 1.5 inches in each direction. The image in Easel is in the lower left corner of the page and the preview also shows the image in the lower left corner of the board.
I did not place my board in the lower left corner of the waste board. I just picked a spot that was convenient. I assumed manually setting the start position would make that the x and y 0 position for that job.
Am I doing something wrong? Is my machine not setup correctly? Is there a step in setting up the project in Easel that I am missing?
Is the resulting carve the correct size?
Can you share your Easel project?
File–>Share–>share with link–>save
The image is the correct size. just in the wrong place. here is the link to the project:
Homing moves the spindle to the lower left corner of the reachable area.
When I select the home position for the project, I move the spindle to the lower left corner of my work piece (the board I want to carve). I assumed this position corresponded with the lower left corner of my image. Is this assumption wrong?
I am confused by the quadrants and the position of the image. Easel shows a 0 for X and Y position in the lower left of the work area. The preview image shows my work piece and the image to carve on the work piece in the lower left corner of the reachable area. When I select a new start position, I expected that point to become the new X0Y0 and the lower left corner of the image to st start carving in that exact spot. But, the actual image is shifted up about 1.5" and right about 1.5"
@JeffBlecher It seems like you may not be setting your work zero. After you home the machine, what steps do you use to set your work zero? Any chance you’re clicking “Use Last Home Position”?
No. I always manually set the work zero, using the keyboard to move the spindle.
Can you try a fast test carve? A small square, with its lower left corner on the origin.
When you set your work zero, set it somewhere completely different than your previous attempt (5" to the back & right or something).
Test went perfect.
Set work zero. Marked spot with an X.
Ran carve. Square was carved exactly where expected:
I guess that means there is something wrong with my other image? Is it too complex?
Should I just save it as a JPG and open in Easel? What is the recommended format?
Can you try your file again, on a scrap?
Unless you’re losing steps or something else mechanical is going on, I can’t see why you’d have this issue.
At the end of the carve (your actual project, not the test), does the bit return to your work zero that you set?
No, it does not return to the original zero. It is skewed up and to the right, the same distance the image carved is skewed.
Then you lost steps during your carve.
OK…that suggests you lost steps somewhere. Try reducing your depth of cut.
EDIT: As I now see Haldor already stated.
The overall depth of cut is 1/8". Reduce that, or the cut depth per pass?
I am new to this, so just trying to understand: How does losing steps make the whole image carve in the wrong place?
“Losing steps” means that your stepper motor encountered a force greater than what the motor could overcome (cutting too deep, cutting too fast, or mechanical problems like v-wheels too tight/loose or machine out of square). The motor attempted to move, but could not. This usually will show as a grinding noise, but it may be really brief and hard to hear over the cutting. The controller only knows where the motors were supposed to move the end mill. If it did not make it there, the steps were lost. The machine will carry on as if it is in the correct location.
If your carve came out correctly, the steps were probably lost on a rapid move at the start of the carve. You may want to reduce your maximum speed in your X & Y axes. ($110 & $111) or your acceleration ($120 & $121).
So, I did a bad job of scientific experimentation. I changed 2 parameters at once. I recreated the image. In Corel Draw, I am able to export an SVG in either version 1.1 (default) or 1.0. A changed to version 1.0. So new image and new svg version.
Good news is, it worked perfect. Carved the image exactly where I wanted (and expected). Not sure if it was the new image or the 1.0 version of svg.
This forum is great. I learned a lot and community support was quick. I appreciate everyone that provided help and advice.
1 Like
