Does anyone use a hold down like this on the xcarve? Its basically what the carvey has. Im looking for something quick.
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Don’t have a pic, but I took a carpenter square and double-side-taped it to my waste board to function just like your pic indicates. Simple, quick, and short/shallow so it stays out of the way.
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Philjohnson is a pro with these.
I drilled holes in a piece of mdf and fastened the board to the table and then had my xcarve cut out the piece. That way it is square to the machine, I also issued my g28 code at the same time.
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Im currently using a set up like bobjewels picture. I had some slipage with masonite recently. Was probably a error on my end. made me want, i guess you would call it a XYZ bump stop that i could tighten down the z.
Best bump stop I’ve seen for the X-Carve going to try to make this style for the X-Carve I have in the classroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-rqf4uSXRE
great work on the part of @MariusHornberger
Not only can you have this on the at the machine zero but anywhere you need it, easy to remove and easy to install.
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How does the carvey stop work? I’ve only seen pictures
I love my bump stop. Makes 99% of my carvings much easier. Home, G28 and a quick Z probe - ready to go.
I read thru that other link @PhilJohnson. Every question I have brings up like 5 new ones. So i was thinking of using pins or something to be able to loosen it and keep it square but if a simple right angle is working for everyone I will just stick with that. Im gonna go with a mix of @PhilJohnson @BobJewell and this one I saw on the other forum because i love those hold down clamps. Ill modify mine so they are removable from the stop and bolt to existing holes.
Now the new questions I have. what is the difference between the location I get when I home and my G28 location. If i home so I’m the furthest to the bottom left of the board and the highest z point and have that be the corner of my bump stop is that also where I set my g28 spot?
so we home to give the machine a 0,0 and then g28 will go off of coordinates from that 0,0. so they can be the same location it we want?
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And that is why I’m going to continue to ask lots of questions. Great point. How far off of machine zero is recommended?
I got mine set an inch on x and y that way my homing switches don’t get all wonky
I very much appreciate this discussion thread. When I walked through the Easel machine setup, I thought I had enabled ‘homing’ but didn’t recall that being part of the setup, it’s just a button and you move on through the setup. Anyway…I couldn’t get the G28/30 to save any settings after shutting down and restarting. Obviously resulting in a few crashes (that’s no fun).
I finally figured out that Homing needed to be enabled. I went back through the machine setup, turned it on, homed the machine, set my preferred Zero point, and issued a G28.1 to set it. I then found another location to use as a ‘park’ and issued a G30.1 to set that.
I rebooted everything, then ‘homed’ the machine and now when i use G28 or G30, it moves to those programmed locations! Yay!! I am so stoked. I finally feel I ‘get it’ now. I was struggling immensely with zero, when to redo that, when to probe, it would get all messed up when I smacked the eStop and rebooted, etc.
Now for the magic. I use a Mac, so I installed the ‘Keyboard Maestro’ and have mapped my F1, F6, F12 keys to issue a home, zero, and park commands when I’m using Easel. In UGS I just set them all as Macros.
Guys, THANK YOU very much for the tips, tricks, discussions, information and example videos. You guys Rocks!
I agree. If it wasn’t for this forum I would have destroyed my machine already. There should be a big GO TO THE FORUM FIRST sign in the box with a new machine.
I tried the G28.1 and 30.1 before I turned homing on. It would not save those locations no matter how many times I tried. Once I enabled homing, it worked flawlessly. Oh sure, it would save the location, but when I rebooted everything, those locations were lost. Enabling homing solved the problem…for me.
Oh, you can use G28/30 alright without homing, but ‘saving’ the location in permanent memory so that they exist after you shutdown/reboot and begin fresh; I couldn’t get it to save unless homing was enabled.
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I’ve had the same issues. Can issue a g28.1 and it works until I have to turn off my xcarve at the end of the night. I am hoping turning on homing might allow this to save my settings.
In fact, I’ve lately seen sometime my machine settings are not being saved and I have to run through the MACHINE SETUP process again. Feel like this is somewhat connected maybe.
Ken… This is what I did for my wasteboard. I made my own wasteboard and made holes everywhere…
I won’t lie… I use either the cam lever clamps on my material or just screw it down. It really depends on what I am carving (and how I am feeling… )
But yes the lever clamping that @MariusHornberger demonstrates in his video work very well.
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I moved my zero point square and ran through the process of zeroing my 3 axis again to set a new G28.1. I then moved the spindle across the board and then I entered a G28 to move it back to my newly recorded zero. Egads! it took off for the far right back corner!! Who knows what happened. So I went through the process of finding 3 axis zero again and entered a G28.1 again. It finally took it and saved the settings.
In order to use the G28/30 though, you MUST ‘home’ your machine after you power it up. It needs to know where ‘home’ reference is before it’ll use the G28 or G30 and move to your programmed coordinates.
Question if I use the G28.1 and set a work zero position can I then go back and set a new position later on ? Basically I setup to do a production run of a few pcs over a day and a half I set that to G28. Then I need to setup a new product on the other side of my wasteboard can I then use that as G28? It doesn’t really matter if I loose the first spot I basically wanna set up the job once. Then be able to go right to the zero after homing, then shut everything down everynight and just use G28 to start right back up on the jobs from the day before.How many times can I reset G28 ? Right now I jog the machine a set distance to setup everyday so this would be handy .