Not a good weekend for CNC

Projects
1

I’m trying to make some stacked signs for Xmas gifts and spent the last few weeks designing and perfecting the tool paths, etc. I put some select pine on the board and start with the first sign… The left y-axis sounded like there were rocks grinding every time it moved… soon the right y-axis was doing the same thing. It didn’t do that less than a week ago when I was doing some v-carves. I stayed with it and let it go…

When I went to the 2nd level, it was carving air… I realized it was starting from 0 (was using document variables in Vcarve) in order to “save” unnecessary Y axis movement, I changed the starting level… well it wasn’t until an hour later when I was wondering how deep it was going to carve that I realized I just made it deeper because I didn’t adjust the the DOC. OK… I stuck with it and wanted to make it work, but the sign wasn’t savable… that was all my fault. I should know better to start changing DOC’s when I’m in the middle of a carve.

Pulled out my 2nd try this morning… Y axis was behaving itself … no unusual sounds at all. Perhaps it was board vibration? Anyways, it’s going along just fine and I’m still in the top level vcarve stage having just cleared a lot of wood when the carriage went crazy back and forth so I killed it wondering what type of evil tool path VC had summoned up for me. The carriage would do anything right. I’d job it right and it would jitter and go left. Long story short, the red wire on the carriage had broken which was causing this behavior. I re-homed it and tried to take up where I left off but it appeared my G28 wasn’t the same or something because it started carving over the top of what was already there.

I flipped the board over and am currently on my 3rd attempt. Oh, the y-axis is now making another unusual noise but not as bad as before. It’s been one of those weekends… drill press broke and I ended up breaking 2 more things on it to fix the one (track was bent and had to drill press head off of pole to fix) in addition to breaking a knuckle on my left hand when the ground appeared sooner than expected while laying DP down. My scroll saw was acting up too… I had less problems with my cheap Dremel scrollsaw than my “elite” Excalibur.

Here’s hoping the 3rd time is a charm!

2

3rd time definitely not a charm. lol I stopped the cut because it seemed to be struggling on the DOC. I wanted to make sure the Z axis hadn’t been reset as sometimes my gcode sender will mess up the zero on Z and I hit zeroed everything out instead of hitting ‘return to zero’. I didn’t realize my error until the carriage went right through my border. Again, def my fault. I should probably do something other than CNC today. Some days my mind just doesn’t seem to work right.

Am on try #4 now. lol.

3

Time to try a different one

4

I"m using UGS, if you cancel a carve, the z-axis resets which gets frustrating. I’ve tried other senders over the years but I’ve not found anything worth using.

5

I can’t keep track of the versions with UGS, but I’ve never been a fan. I know it’s popular, though. Have you tried CNCjs?
Whatever version of UGS you use must use G92 (temporary) rather than G10L20 (persistent) to set the work offsets.

6

I don’t recall hearing about that before when I was searching a few years ago. It looks good from what I see on the website. I’ll give it a shot.

7

@TimVannaman have you been using the axis reset buttons? The only time I have a problem is when GRBL switches to G54 from whatever coordinate system I was using after canceling a job.
https://winder.github.io/ugs_website/guide/platform/#digital-read-out