Hi everyone,
I bought the 3018 pro and the machine seems to run fine. I’m a newbie so it seems fine to me. It carves and does what I tell it too except when I want it to cut all the way through the material. For example. I wanted to cut out a square from the shapes menu from an 1/8 thick lexan. I slid my cut slider to the bottom and in depth i put .125. I go over to cut settings and set depth per pass to.04. I then hit carve, confirm all the settings, set my new work zero settings and hit carve. It just carves the square doesn’t go deep enough. I even tried the same steps with the settings set to half inch on the 1/8 lexan and still doesn’t cut through. It doesn’t make sense if I tell the machine to cut half inch deep using an 1/8 thick piece of material and it doesn’t cut through. Any ideas as to what is going on. Thanks for you help.
Try this:
- Use 1/8" Lexan for your material
- Jog your bit down so it contact the board/base of the machine
- Jog the bit up 3/16" and use this level as your z-zero
- In your design set material thickness and total depth of cut to 3/16"
- Carve
If the machine dont cut through then you most likely have play in the Z-carriage causing it to deflect a little.
thanks Haldor I’ll give that a try and let you know if it worked.
Hi Haldor, I tried what you mentioned and it didn’t work. I did check to see if there was play in the z carriage and think that might me it. Can you have a look on the link I’m posting below. The sound that the carriage is making in the video is exactly the sound I have on mine. Can this be causing the issue. If so I don’t see how I would be able to tighten that up. Its a brand new machine, I got it like two weeks ago. I really appreciate your help, hopefully one day I could return the favor.
The spindle seems tight on mine, its the clicking on the carriage that seems to be the issue.
It really dont take much play at all before this become an issue, the 3018 isnt all that rigid apparently.