My X-Carve is Being X-stupid

[TimBrown]

I’m new. That’s a starting point. haha. Two part (may turn 3 ) question instead of flooding the board.

I have attempted 3 boards. One came out AWESOME.

The other two, stopped mid way through.

Board 1, int stopped mid way through and was just sitting in one position for a long time before I realized it had stopped. Still have 45 minutes of carving left but I couldn’t get it started again.

Board 2, randomly stopped and went to home position.

Soooo… Question 1: Is there a way to re-start the carve, either without having to carve the entire thing again (meaning it would be carving air) and in restarting, how do I get it to start in the perfect spot again? I tried use previous starting point and the mill didn’t even come close to touching the wood on one, on the other it started a couple mm off course.

Question 2: I used a straight up mill for the rough cut and wanted to use a V mill for the detail cut but it was not leaving very clean deep cuts.

Question 3: did either of those two questions make sense?
Question 3B, is there a way to have the router turn itself off when it’s done so I could go to sleep at night hoping it all works out?

Thank you.

[HaldorLonningdal]

It sounds like you have USB drop-out, either from RF noise somewhere or USB port power management. If you dont have an externally powered USB-hub I recommend you get one

Answer 1:
A - If you have homing switches installed and homed (sending $H to the controller) before confirming your work zero you have your reference there. Work zero is stored as an offset from machine zero which homing establish. In Easel simply click “Use previous home”.
B - You can either mask areas that are previously carved in Easel, or edit the gcode file to remove the previously carved parts.

Answer 2:
Would depend on the wood, machine rigidity, feed rate & RPM. So troubleshoot such parts its best to provide an image or two to highlight the symptoms

Answer 3:
Never leave the CNC unattended/unsupervised

Shapeoko3 Fire