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I just finished building my CNC last weekend, I was lucky enough to stumble upon Easel. I’m liking the ease of use of the program but I’m having an issue. When the machine makes multiple passes, the bit drifts to one side.
Both of these cutouts were made from the same file, I just rotated it 90deg and redid the cut. nothing else was changed. I’m not thinking its an issue with my machine since the cut goes towards the same side of the image no matter how it’s rotated. Has anyone else had this issue? Any ideas on fixing it?
It’s on a home built machine. Controlled with an Arduino uno/GRBL, tb6560 drivers, Nema 17 steppers and a 12v 30a power supply. It’s cutting with a dremel and 1/8" straight cut router bit. It has the drift whether I’m cutting that pink insulation foam or wood (pine, balsa, and a piece of mahogany).
I thought it was an issue with my machine so I swapped the steppers around, changed out the power supply and cutting bit, tried cutting different materials… once I realized that it was drifting the same direction on the image no matter how it was rotated, now I’m stumped. I’ll have to try and cut something out that I make entirely in Easel and see if it makes a difference.
I believe it’s running GRBL 1.1? Whatever the most current version is, I downloaded it last week. I’ve tried changing every setting on the stepper drivers that I could, changed out the bit in my dremel (zip bit to a router bit), changed feed and depth settings (faster\slower) and I was convinced it had something to do with my machine build until I rotated the image 90deg and got that cut shown in the image above.
I haven’t done a compicated cut using only an Easel image yet. I cut out some lettering in that pink foam but it was only a single pass cut, so that doesn’t help me right now, lol. When I get home tonight I’ll try a different cut and see where that gets me.
this was the image I used, except it was the original not a printed out version. I imported with image trace, selected trace outside then imported. it gave me 5 separate images, I deleted all but the middle one then chose to cut outside the path giving me the outline of the dog. I can upload the original image when I get home later.
