My lettering looks like crapola

I am not happy with the quality of my lettering after using easel for a few months… It’s me I’m sure…

I use Vbits, mostly 60 degree but sometimes 30, 20 and 15 depending on how small the lettering is and how detailed I want it to be. Even with the 60 degree vbit its not smooth and there is a lot of burs and crap that I need to dremel out. When I dremel out it inevitably can impact the quality of the original cut.

I have the crossover set at the standard 40% and it doesn’t matter what material I use, Maple, Oak, MDF, Poplar… the lettering just comes out messy.

I check the surface of the material each time to ensure it is flat and I run my boards through a planer before glueing them up. The Xcarve is flat as well and I check that daily.

Suggestions? Thanks

I’ll upload a picture in a few mins on my latest carve.

thanks

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Thanks. The vbit is the one I bought from Inventiveness and is definitely not flat. Plus my 15, 20 and 30 degree vbits are definitely not flat. Suckers are sharp as hell.

Also, I zprobe each run with the zprobe.

Hi Phil.

I use the basics of Easel and the zprobe feature, which automatically does those calculations, I believe. I am in process of moving to Vcarve desktop for creation/gcode creation but was planning on using easel pro still for a post processor. I do plan on exploring other post processors after I get vcarve nailed down.

I also sent along a pic of my dewalt 611 as I was told 1 - 1.5 were the right settings…

Here are some pictures:

You think that is the root cause? Calibrating the touch plate?

What about the router speed?

Thanks

Primarely, your carve detail is cut too deep and getting that sorted first provide a better foundation for dialing in the RPM.
I bet the “00” in the carve is not intended to bleed into eachother.

Thanks

  1. The touchplate is set with the machine setup, I just checked but will do it again before my next carve.

  2. Where can I find more info on steps per mm? I attached the screen shot of the advance tab in Easel…

  3. Screws are all tight

  4. Wood is planed before each run and I also check the wood with a level before and I after I clamp it down.

the machine setup can not calibrate the touch plate. it can only install the default perimeters for a touch plate. this tells the X-Carve that you have a touch plate and would like to use it.

if your plate is not exactly the same thickness as the default setting, (very unlikely that it is) then you really should measure the thickness of the plate you have and manually enter that into the setup.

as far as calibration of the Z axis, when you tell the machine to move the Z 1mm does it actually move 1mm or is it 1.5mm or .7mm etc. etc. for this I recommend a dial indicator but you can use a caliper of ruler but they are not as accurate.

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Take the bit out, jog the router as low as it is allowed.
Place a ruler next to a good reference point and jog the router up say 50mm, is the actual movement 50mm or it is say 48 or 51?
Report back and we can suggest what to change.

The values governing the calibration is within the GRBL-parameters, you call them by typing in “$$” and hit ENTER in the Machine Inspector / Console window.

Watching vids on how to do this now. Will snag some shots of what I find.

Any suggestion on the z calibration?