I’m having problems too. Did a v bit carve last week with zero issues. Only change today is I used a brand new Armana 60 degree bit. Last week was with the crappy, one year old Inventables 90. I have cascaded edges on my text and fringy edges on my Oramask. Basic carve, with 2 lines of text. See below please:
For clairity, are the carves pictured above done with Amana bit or the old Inventables bit?
Those stepped edges possibly indicate angle is not correct if it has those steps on all four sides.
It is the Armana bit. The outside border of the workpiece is not cascaded, so I believe it is software related.
I understand your thoughts but if the bit is sharp the mask should have clean edge.
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I agree. Brand new yesterday out of the package. I inspected it and the cutting edges are flawless. Here is the border. Flat without cascading:
Was the border cut with V bit?
I notice the border mask has a better edge than the text.
Everything was done with a single V. I didn’t have a larger down-cut bit handy to go a 2 cut.
I have never gotten good results with the mask and a vbit. I always use a 1/8" downcut so it does not lift the mask. Just my preference.
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Here is the link to the latest. Images are in a following post. Thank you for your help.
Still having the same problems. Dogbone problem is slightly better, chattering is same or worse. Material is poplar, bit is a 90 degree v-bit that we got from inventables with our machine. The machine is all tight and square. I went through it again to check. I am really at my wits end with this and could use any suggestions. We have used this machine for a couple years and only encountered this problem since late October of this year.
Here is a link to the project:
Here are the photos of the latest project.
Another piece to the puzzle. Another teacher was down helping me trouble shoot the problems we are having. He observed that the ‘chatter’ (for lack of a better term) is much more pronounced on curved or angled cuts. On cuts that are purely X or Y axis the results are much smoother. His thought was perhaps something is happening when both the X and Y stepper motors are running. I am not sure how to test this exactly.
We tried a carving the project shown in the pictures above with a brand new straight bit. We still had some chatter but it was slightly improved.
We have some time late next week to spend a few hours taking the machine out of it’s enclosure and going through it again to look for things that need tightening or adjustment.
Is anyone else experiencing this? This problem came on rather suddenly after 2 years of pretty much flawless cutting.
How tight are the belts?
What kind of pull do you measure when lifting the belts at the middle 1"?
How firm are the wheels?
If they are a little on the tight side motion can be jaggered.
I recently began having problems with my v bit carves too, thought it was my spoilboard out of level, dull bit, or belts loose but now I’m thinking it’s the v carve paths… pockets and inlays work great with straight bit but v carves are looking very sloppy. I’ve only been doing text, lavenderia, and it’s leaving material inside the v groove and a lot of fuzzies
I have a video which shows the problem pretty clearly. If you watch starting at about 27 seconds you can clearly see the machine hesitating and surging both on the curved portion and the straight line.
The video is slowed down because at full speed it is difficult to tell what’s going on but you can really see it in slow motion.
I will measure the belt tension and post it. Here is the link to the file in the video:
What are your grbl settings and also what is your driver settings? (full-step, half-step, micro-step, etc…)
We are using the latest Easel driver v 0.3.18 and Easel Pro. With Easel Pro set to hard maple the feed rate is 50 in/min, the plunge rate is 20 in/min and the depth per pass is .05 per minute.
As for the settings in the driver (full-step, half-step, etc) can you please tell me how to check those? I honestly usually just trust Easel’s recommendations for settings.
I am not great on this problem but looks to me like your plunge rate is pretty hard. If it was my machine i would run around 12. Just my thoughts.