Cut continues past where it should (offset?)

X-Carve Troubleshooting
1

I have had this machine since September and I can’t seem to get the hicups out of this thing! The frustration level is at high, so I’m walking away from it for the night.

I will admit, whenever I come across problems, I can go to the forums and find answers, but I don’t know what to do this time.

I’ve done the things some of you have done, like crushed the limit switches, broke bits and then maybe not so much; I broke my spindle (I think I dug a little deep). After visiting the forums, I decided to upgrade and drop another $300 and upgrade to the Dewalt 611 (the Canadian Dollar is tanking right now so that hurts!!)

I stiffened the gantry and installed the Dewalt last weekend. Looks like things are going good, not being too aggressive, checking my chip load, first pass is good. It plunges for the second pass, things are going good, but then it continues past where it should change directions! Thought that was odd, so I put in another piece of wood. This time in another area, again on the second pass, it does the same thing. UGCS doesn’t show anything odd, but I rewrite the gcode again, and again, it wanders in another spot. Back to the forums…
I found things like:

https://inventables.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/2090938-carving-is-offset

I noticed some stuttering so I also investigated the pots and spent the greater part of the evening setting them (I closed the link, but I followed the video for the Manhattan Wood Project). I am far from an electrical guy, so I had to do the pots without a multimeter (heck, I had to get someone to solder the board for me!).

I then went over every belt, electrical connection, screw and bolt I could, ran it back and forth looking for pauses and everything looked great (couple screws needed tightening, but nothing critical)

I decided to give it another chance and I made up a simple sign for the kids but lowered the cut speed to 25in/min and once again, the first pass is beautiful and then off it goes! This one was in MDF, 0.10" pass and a 0.3125" bit. I watched that thing for any signs of stutter and it was moving smooth. It just went off on its own!

20160123_215439.jpg1200×1015 380 KB

This is one of the earlier ones in pine. You can see where it kept going and offset the corner cut outside the work area. Kept the profile, just offsetted.

20160123_112741.jpg2064×1548 1.01 MB

Anyone have any thoughts? I’ve given up and the white flag is waving for the night

3

You may have been onto something there…my other nemesis; software!

Last night I went back to the shop and found out even Easel could not communicate with the machine. I reinstalled Easel locally and the Arduino, then ran 2 test caves last night with multiple passes and there was no wandering (one through Easel and the other thru UGCS 1.09). I sat up on my stool and watched and I haven’t noticed any stuttering either (although there was a slight dramatic pause when running the Easel test cut, but was still lined up).

After I broke the spindle, I powered everything down for about 2 weeks. Knowing the Dewalt was going to be delivered the next day, I powered up the computer and there was a fair sized windows update and the virus checker was all paranoid because it hadn’t scanned in those 2 weeks. I wonder if that had something to do with it?

Anyways, fingers crossed and thanks for directing me in that direction!