No it doesn’t. I put that picture to show location for zeroing, I don’t have stationary camera, couldn’t do it with one hand. I use paper underneath the bit for zeroing when I use Easel.
James, I am glad you were successful. I know that Easel was working fine before (Both I and @AlanDavis were able to show you it worked).
I really think the issue may have been you were not able to zero the detail bit accurately before. From your video it looks like the dust shoe was preventing you from setting the Z zero by capturing a piece of paper since you were not able to see the bit very well. . So maybe it was being zeroed in the rough pocket that was already cut .25 down. That is a simple explanation that explains exactly the results you were seeing.
In my experience I have found that the simplest explanation that fully accounts for the issue is usually the right explanation.
So good job! Now you know it works and you can start carving good stuff again.
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I don’t really think I was doing that (the setting height difference), but then again anything is possible. I will soon re-carve with the dust shoe attached and see my results. If the dust shoe is the problem, I will just have to dual carve w/o the dust shoe attached!
If your dust shoe was dropping the bit a quarter inch then it would be messing up all your cuts.
There is nothing special about the detail pass that would make it react to the dust shoe more than any other cut.
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No argument here, just want to eliminate all possibilities. Now it’s true confession time. I know I said no more dust shoe stuff, well after this maybe. 
I never was totally satisfied with my acrylic dust shoe so I ordered me a 3/8" X 12" X 12" piece of acrylic and I have just finished carving it out on the x-carve. The first acrylic shoe I messed up so bad with dried on expoy that it is hard to see what I am doing, so I will have plenty of denatured ‘achyhol’ on hand when I glue in the brush and magnets for this shoe. It will be squeaky clean for sure!
Just a though, if the bit was loose in the collet wouldn’t it move up in the collet and carve less deep than moving down and carving deeper? For that matter if it was loose enough to move down in the collet wouldn’t it be loose enough to fly out when the ‘z’ axis moves up? Just wondering?
Highly unlikely. If bit sleeps, you must have graduately deeper edges. Your detail edges were even if I’m not mistaking. But like Allen says, dust shoe is not good idea for two stage cuts and pocketing. I always remove before running important pockets. And upcut bits goes deeper if colete is loose.
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James, there is a lot of downward force on the bit (when using a upcut bit). Even if the bit feels tight in the collet it can still be pulled downward by the force it generates as it cuts. With the dust shoe it can sometimes be difficult to tighten the collet as tight as necessary.
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Well shoot, have you ever been so disgusted with yourself you just want to spit? If I was a drinking man, I’d get drunk! As hard as I worked at not messing up my latest 3/8" dust shoe I did and I got so pissed I threw it in the trash! Just not my day. Thankfully I still have the 1/2" dust shoe as messed up as it is it works great, guess I will just live with it.
This answered my question from other thread. I can’t wait to go try it now…, I’ve been wasting tons of time. Lol
How the heck do you keep the X/Y from moving when changing the bit? The pressure I have to apply to my 611 locking nut to loosen/tighten the collet is causing the spindle to lose it’s X/Y location slightly. I’ve tried holding it as firmly as possible so that it doesn’t move but it’s not consistent and I’m scared of doing a complex carve only to ruin it in my detail pass because I inadvertently offset the X or Y alignment slightly.
I thought maybe I could use the ‘Use Last Home Position’ button, but when I press it nothing happens, is this normal behavior? Also thought maybe I could record the machine XYZ in the inspector and then reset to that after bit change but didn’t know if those fields could be edited.
Any ideas greatly appreciated!
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Was this resolved? I don’t even have my X-Carve assembled yet, but wondered if maybe the current on the Z motor drive was insufficient resulting in the motor not lifting as much as it intends to and then dropping down further than intended. But that’s just a shot in the dark.
The other thing I wonder is if dual stage carving is a scenario where the limit switches would come in handy - at least for X and Y. Moving to the limit (machine) home, then moving to set coordinates based on that I would think would give you the most repeatable XY location even if you move the carriage during the bit change, and should you ever be touching the machine with it energized anyway - this would be even more of an issue with people that have the 24V spindle as the Dewalt has its own power switch, but it seems hard to believe that the XY motion shouldn’t be de-energized when touching the machine.
But I’m new here.
In the two stage cut walkthrough there are two buttons, red for “lock motors” and green “unlock motors”.Note that changes take effect, after pushing one or the other, only when you jog your machine in any of the x, y or z direction.Cheers! 
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No, I re-zero each bit.
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No problem, I’m blind more times than not myself :slight_smile 
Can you explain this a bit better?
I would love it if I was able to set the x and y like the z axis with the touch plate. It sounds like you have accomplished this. Can you please go into more detail about it?
Thanks
You don’t have to as long as you’ve either a) homed your machine at the very beginning OR b) accurately zero your work, every time.
Option a) ( my preferred choice )
- Home your machine - So it’ll know where its XYZ is.
- Set up your work on the machine.
- Zero your work - So it’ll know what the works XYZ is.
- Start milling.
- “Accidentally” bump the machine - Machine will not know where its XYZ is anymore but will still know where the works XYZ would be in relation to ITs.
- Home your machine once more but do NOT reZero - Machine will regain knowledge what its XYZ are and thus where the work is.
- Continue milling.
- This will require for your Homing Game to be repeatably accurate to your needs.
- Can fairly easy be achieved with homing switches and a Z-Touch Plate.
- Comes with added safety through use of soft AND hard limit switches due to use of homing switches.
Option b)
- Set up your work on the machine.
- Zero your work - So it’ll know what the works XYZ is.
- Start milling.
- “Accidentally” bump the machine - Machine will not know where its XYZ is anymore but will still know where the works would be in relation to its.
- Zero your work once more - Machine will regain knowledge about the works XYZ.
- Continue milling.
- This will require for your Zeroing Game to be repeatably accurate to your needs.
- Will require some form of XYZ capable Touch Plate.
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