Hi guys,
I’m struggling to dial in my speeds and feeds for a piece of beech. I usually only work with plywood or softwoods and normally just to cut simple profile passes.
I’ve recently tried to move into hardwood 3d carving so have got myself some beech, V Carve pro and some stl files. And then it all started to go wrong. I can’t get my speeds and feeds right and all I get is a lot of chatter and/or a wonderful smell of burnt wood.
Settings:
Dewalt 611: Speed 1
Bit: 0.25 inch 2 flut upcut
Feed Rates: 32. 45, 65 inches (all to no avail)
Plunge Rate: 22 inch
Depth per Pass: 0.125 inches
Any advice from some of your more experienced folks? I really don’t want to have to keep planing this wood into non existence.
Best
Alexi
Assuming you have a stock machine…
try going faster and shallower for your roughing pass (are we talking roughing pass?)
80 ipm
15 plunge
0.8 depth of cut
0.08 - that is a typo not 0.8 depth of cut!!!
Honestly we’ve been having trouble with roughing passes and just general profiling or pocket cutting in this stuff.
I’ll give these settings a go for another test pocket and see what happens.
I have to admit I was rather hoping you would be the one to come and help.
Alexi
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Just to check, you reckon changing my depth of cut from 0.125 inches to 0.8 inches will help?
I do, I generally run shallower but I speed things up…if all goes well at that setting bump up plunge a bit, but be careful the axis is not flexing as it lowers into the wood.
Then, if you and the machine are comfortable with those settings, you can start increasing speed… at those shallow depths 120 IPM would be fine, but make sure all is good at lower speeds before bumping it up too much 
You’re OK we didn’t do it. We were kind of scratching our heads over how 0.125 to 0.8 was shallower. We’ll give 0.08 a go now.
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Ok so a much cleaner cut however it looks like the x axis steppers skipped a lot (our zero position is now 4 inches to the right of where it started).
We’re thinking that we may have the carriage too firmly tightened onto the rail. Any thoughts?
4 inches is substantial
The carriage may be too tight/too loose, which controller are you using? The x-controller? G-Shield?
Do you have pulley set screws or are the pulleys permanently attached to the steppers?
We have the good old pulley screws and the original G-shield. I’ve never gotten round to upgrading it to be honest.
That’s ok…
Have you ever adjusted the potentiometers to tweak the stepper motors current?
Just checked, it seems that we did do it when we put the X Carve together.
Check the v-wheels…can you turn them using two fingers without too much effort (really specific…i know )
If not, they are too tight…check all 4 for the X-axis. They should be tight enough so that it takes two fingers to spin them.
I’ll give that a check. I take it this would be with the steppers powered down?
I would keep them powered…but shouldn’t really matter…check one wheel at a time.
Judging by the fact that I can’t turn them at all unless I grasp the carriage and move it as one I think these may be just a wee bit too tight.
Too tight is worse than too loose. Too loose will introduce up and down play, but too tight will keep the carriage from moving smoothly.
Loosen them all up first…then tighten back up, this keeps things nice and level.
