I built my machine about 2 years ago, however I never did any leveling, setup, or calibration on it. Nothing was severely off so I ignored it. After running some bigger stuff I noticed that it was cutting deeper on the far side. I found a video a while ago about leveling the waste board and leveling the machine, but I have seemed to have lost. I can’t seem to find a setup guide on the forums. I would need help with leveling and making sure its square I have the 1000mm xcarve with the power/controller box.
Check this site out he has a lot of good videos to help you out. : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVWqe-RPxZc9G2tevx1vT9w
Ditto what Wayne said about Paw Paw’s vids!
In addition to the wealth of knowledge on Paw Paw’s channel, the first half of this vid (different channel) was helpful to me.
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I watched that video and did that to my X-Carve, screwed it to the table and resurfaced the waste board. It works good now.
Hey! that’s the video I “lost” and couldn’t find.My one question though is when he was leveling the waste board/ xcarve, he made a comment about the middle of the board being too high. How would you fix that then? Just use a surfacing bit?
I used a surfacing bit and it worked great.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071748JQN/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_S8qICb0CPW5D7
Ditto what Russell said. I have the same bit, and it works very well
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The only thing I need to do is flatten the wasteboard, and tighten the belts(maybe). While I was checking to see if the router runs straight with the printed lines, the x was a little bit off but the y axis seemed perfectly straight. if the router isnt parallel with the waste board in the x direction only, how would I take care of it?
I personally don’t think that the printed lines mean much. It could be that when you installed the waste board it wasn’t 100% square to the machine or the printed lines aren’t square to the waste board. The printed board is great for reference to get close and I imagine that 99% of xcarve users find that good enough, but if you need more precision, surface the board and make some squares to ensure that your stock is square to the machine, and also some hard stops to pull the x axis to in order to ensure that every time you turn it on, you have square. I work in aerospace manufacturing and we tolerance to .01" up to .03" for most parts, so if I can hit within that with the xcarve, I’m pretty happy.
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I use a square/ stop, with bolts going through the top into the threaded inserts plus clamps to hold the piece in place. So I was thinking that if the printed lines aren’t square to the router then the holes wouldn’t be either. This is fine if I’m cutting something out, because all the work done with the router will be in the position relative to its self, but if I already have a dimensioned piece of stock then the router work won’t be square relative to the workpiece.
hello I recently built my first cnc router with my 3D printer all the software is loaded correctly to the arduino and cnc shield the x and y axises function normally but the z axis stepper motor when set at .5 mm advances .5 inches any ideas
I’ve seen a few folks on here use the machine to cut a square. I think I’ve seen it referred to as a bump stop in some cases. So what you would do is drill your holes in the top of a piece of stock to line up with the inserts, then cut an L-shape. Just make sure to add a dog bone fillet to the point where the x and y portions of the L meet so your stock will sit flush with the new square you made.
Take a look at the beginning of your gcode. You should see a G21 that indicates to use metric. If you see a G20, your code is programmed in inches. What software are you using?
that is what I did, basically followed this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rISXmp_ZUk&index=7&t=0s&list=PL80tRflzFAKG83o5ruavEje8TKsXTBb6Q
My concern is that if I have a dimensioned work piece square to the clamp and waste board, the cuts will not be square relative to the the work piece. When I checked it wasn’t off by much.
Oh cool. Did you do the t-track and side clamps as well? If so, do you have any tips for success?