I’m using butcher block to carve some cutting blocks and charcuterie boards. I ran into a problem where my wife wanted one for her friend that was shaped like the country France. I tried to cut the shape out twice and then gave up. When setting it up to cut on shape path, when I started the cut it would sink the bit all the way through the board, instead of cutting a path around the design lowering the bit just a tad each pass… I’m not sure what I did wrong for it to do this, I’ve never had this happen when carving anything (letters, designs, etc.)
I did not. I never make any changes to those settings
You’ll need to provide more information.
What machine?
How did you set your Z0?
How much room do you have above your stock?
Can you share your gcode?
- X-Carve Pro
- I always run through the probe steps
- Just enough room to get the dust collector
- G-code attached
Charcuterie Board - France.nc (170.6 KB)
I wouldn’t normally use a 1/4" bit for this but it was the longest one I had to get through 1.5" material. I’d rather use a 1/8" bit but didn’t have one that length.
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Any chance you’re running out of room and crashing your Z when you retract to start the job? With a long endmill and thick stock, this can happen.
When I cut really thick stock, I’ll just cut half way or less on the CNC. Much less of a headache too do that, and then jigsaw and flush with a trim router or router table.
There was plenty of room to run the Z Probe. Next time I’ll just cut half the depth and use my jigsaw to cut the rest out. I was hoping to not do that but then again I’m not always cutting 1.5" thick butcher block into shapes so this shouldn’t be an ongoing issue. It would just be nice to be able to use the X-Carve Pro to do this when needed. I’ll do some testing again to see if it happens again on video to post.
When you experience an initial plunge greater than expected, it typically is because of one of two reasons:
- Your Z zero is not where you expect. There can be a few reasons this happens. The most common I see when people are using long endmill with thick stock is that they top out the Z and lose steps.
- Mechanical issues on the Z. The endmill pulls itself into the stock. Z steps aren’t correct. Loose shaft couplers, etc.
There’s no reason the Xcarve pro shouldn’t be able to cut your design.
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I had a similar problem on 1.5” material. Set to cut depth of .12”, probed my 60 degree v bit. Started cut and v bit went deep into my very expensive piece of cedar. Stopped the carve turned the board over reset cut depth to .12” and started. V bit cut to .28” and I let it run and finish. Looked great but much deeper than I wanted. Next project set the v bit all the way into chuck till it bottomed out, set to .12”, and probed. It worked fine this time. Apparently when you get close to the z upper area it goes whacky
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Thank you guys for responding, this has been very informative!
I had the bit extended out as much as I could to ensure the bit had at least 1.5" in length - I wasn’t aware that you could crash your Z like you guys described, so I’m sure that’s what the issue was. I figured as long as I probed the bit that everything would work correctly.