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Need some help. New to CNC. I have an X-Carve Pro. New to Carveco Maker. Did a stacked text design in Carveco Maker and imported the GCode into Easel. The upper level roughing pass was done with a ¼” downcut bit and finishing pass with a 1/8” downcut bit. The lower level was done the same way, ¼” downcut bit for roughing pass and 1/8” downcut bit for the finishing pass. The ¼” bit did just fine in both roughing passes. As you can see in the photo the 1/8” finishing passes not so much. The wood is soft maple. Any ideas on how to correct this?
It looks to me like the 1/8" Z zero was set a little deeper than the 1/4". ORRR the 1/8" was loose in the collet and slipped down, making it carve deeper than intended.
Hopefully you’re using an actual 1/8" collet and not one of those adapter sleeves for 1/4" to 1/8"
EDIT: OHHHHHH I FORGOT. One very important thing to check!!
Go to Machine Inspector (Press Ctrl+Shift+D)
Scroll to the bottom area and What is the $1 setting?
This should be set to 255 and if it’s not than gravity will slowly pull the Z down AFTER you’ve probed Z zero and could very well cause this sort of an issue.
Thank you for the reply Seth. My 1/8" bit does have a 1/4" shaft but I will verify it is tight on the next try. Pressing CTRL+Shift+D does bring up the Machine Inspector but does not allow scrolling. On the Machine > General Settings there is a block next to Machine Inspector that states Upload Firmware. Will pressing Upload Firmware allow me to see the rest of the information that should be under Machine Inspector?
According to Inventables, they set that $1=255 by default, however it seems to be set to 0 for quite a bunch of people.
However there is One thing in Easel that might be causing this problem!! There is there is a “Lock Steppers” option that appears right here during 2 bit carves BUT this is NOT the correct thing to do for the XCP for a bit swap. So Do NOT use these buttons, Clicking the top one Just sets $1=255 BUT clicking the bottom one Sets $1=0 so you’ll want to make sure to NOT click these buttons
And IF you ever have issues with care depth on the XCP I recommend checking that $1=255 is set correctly as the first thing to look at.
Ran the program after correcting $1 to 255 and avoiding the Lock Steppers option and it turned out very nice. Again, thanks for the help and support Seth. And thanks to X-Carve for providing this forum.
