Increasing the z axis travel height

This may not be the way to address what I am trying to do, but here is it is… I am making large cut outs in a flat piece, then in the bottom of the cut outs (which do not go all the way through the material) I am cutting out some designs. My problem is that once the roughing is completed the new “zero” for the z axis for the detail pass is significantly lower than the zero for the roughing pass. The machine spends a significant amount of time tracing the detail pass design in thin air until it finally goes through enough passes to actually reach the bottom of the cutout, at which point it cuts out to the desired depth (which is measured from the original surface of the material. I considered re-zeroing to the surface of the newly formed cut out, but then there is not enough height when the cutter needs to travel to a different cut out, it would score a line across the material moving from one roughed out pocket to the next… so I am thinking I would just increase the travel height of the z axis?..

You are using multiple workpiece setup like shown here?

**Note: that certain designs will require raising the safety height to ensure there is not a crash into the side walls… OR if you are doing a multi pocket carve just as you are describing here:

So increase the safety height and it will not hit the side walls. Granted, this will elongate the carve time and it might be a significant increase depending on the design, but this is kindof a limitation of Easel… Fusion360 would handle these stay-downs better without hitting the walls. :man_shrugging:

1 Like

To add to what @SethCNC is saying if you do re-zero the Z-Axis, you would probably need to change both the “Safety Height” and the “Origin Safety Height” to:

  1. Safety Height - will keep the bit from going through areas during the carve if re-zeroed to new pocket depth after roughing if set correctly

  2. Origin Safety Height - will prevent the bit from going through everything when the carve is completed .

Note that if you are performing 2-stage carves with Easel and doing this type of work, you might want to have the pocket carves on one workpiece where you perform both the roughing and the detail pass, and make a second workpiece where you only perform the carving of the designs in the bottom of the pockets. This is because the detail pass will carve around the outside of the pockets at full depth which might not be OK for the bit depending on the size of the bit and the rigidity of the machine.

{:0)

Brandon Parker

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.