How are you setting your zero between sides? Are you aligning to the top left using a three axis zero? I’m looking into picking up a Triquetra to help me along, can anyone share their experiences?
With the Triquetra Touch Plate, the only real requirement is that when you place your material on the cnc that it be aligned with the travel of the Y Axis squarely. For Side A of your project you zero to the Front Left corner with a zeroing file generated with the Triquetra Tool Box. Than flip your material to Side B and again, insure that the Y axis of your material be aligned squarely with the travel of the Y axis. Location on the machine is not important. Then zero to the Front Right corner with a file generated by the Triquetra Tool Box.
When generating your tool Paths be sure that your origin is set to the same corner that you are zeroing to for each side. Images below.
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Left Front for Side A
Right Front for Side B
Zero Location Selection Page of the Triquetra Tool Box
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For multisided carves I usually zero off a fixture seperate from the actual work piece + alignment pins.
I understand that alignment pins will set the work piece in the same location relative to the prior cut, but since our machines have no positional encoder, do you trust the stepper motors to hold the correct position and not jump step during the material swap and tool changes? If I was on the same tool I think I’d feel confident doing this, but tool changes kind of scare me. Do you just initialize easel to engage steppers during your tool change?
CJ many of us do 2 stage cuts and nothing jumps or looses place for X and Y when changing the bit. Would be no different with 2 sided carving when pinning method is used.
The motors stay energized, “locked”, in place to prevent this and you need to really work to push it out of position when changing bits. You need to re-zero Z obviously but this is done without affecting X/Y which remains.
I’ll have to give it a shot, I honestly never trusted the steppers to hold in place, but that’s probably my history of 3d printing, where the steppers are pretty weak.
Word of caution: if your using the Gshield or an Xcontroller with auto torque reduction enabled, don’t be surprised if it moves during a bit change. There’s just not a lot of torque in those situations.
It’s an easy fix on the Xcontroller but not so on the Gshield.
All that being said, if it does slip, just re-home the machine and your X and Y zero will be restored! Work zero is relative to machine zero so as long as you re-establish machine zero, you’re good!
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I use to do alot of double sided machining when I had a bigger more industrial machine and still in the process of setting up this machine.
I use to machine side A (top side) but added 4 dowel pin holes in the outer corners and a 5 hole right in the origin corner into the machine job that use to go through and into the waste board
Then once finished side A, I would remove the job and load up side B file (bottom side) with just the 5 holes open to machine, but not with the timber job loaded and do a location check with an air cut.
Then insert 4 timber dowels into the waste board holes and then drop the job flipped onto the dowels and clamp down but now turn off the dowel holes and turn on the machine file and then run your job.