Anyone have a good way to make sure something mounted to the waste board is perfectly square to the gantry? I cut this A out and was planning to give it as a wedding gift so of course I show it to my mom after i sanded and was about to paint it and she suggested that I carve the two names and the date they get married into it which is a really good idea but I’m afraid I wont get it perfectly square.
Here is basically what I mean. If I could cut it out like this I would.
make a jig.
I’m about to do the following so I can set up a lot faster.
make a jig on the board itself… screw down some 1/8 - 1/4 " material of some kind along the edge. mill that down so it creates an upside down L in the corner so there is a flush bump corner. This is a general jig or alignment method that makes things easier.
make a jig for the part. this way you can program the cuts to be inside of the jig area and as long as everythign is placed correctly… it will be as close as it can get.
I am going to be getting some corner braces (the 3 sided braces for squaring 3 sides together) and using it as a zero plate… this way it’s permanently attached to the jig and will be measured to where the parts zero is. using a macro, you can use this to auto zero the part. I am going to be setting mine up for double sided cuts.
Hope this helps!
A jig is a great idea thanks.
If you’re doing a cut out then it really doesn’t matter if the material is square to the machine unless its a tight tolerance
i already cut it out and now need to go back and engrave it. i could cut again but as simple as the design is its actually a ton work. The letters are to thick to cut out from one piece of wood so I cut two pieces then glue them together and sand them flush. Im lazy and dont want to do that all over again when i have a perfectly good one already made haha.
okay got ya, I thought you were doing it in one session, in that case do what @AbearDesign suggested
This is the brace I was mentioning. Need to see if it’s conductive enough to zero with. If so, screw it to the corner of the jig, then write a macro which will auto zero around the corners.
Just wanted to finish off with the final product.
I ended up just carving the outline of the A into some scrap MDF then just dubble sided sticky tape the A onto the MDF. I painted the inside of the lines just to make them show up better.
That was a smart solution. Looks great!
Awesome!!
Zinc is conductive enough for probes.
The rule of thumb is that if you can pass a voltage through it at more than half of the applied voltage it will work fine.
The probe uses a pin on the arduino to determine if its logic 0. Logic 0 in analog terms is 0v to 1.5v or 2v depending on the device. So if you use a meter and a can get it to beep on the continuity circuit using a 1 foot wire then it will work fine. As long as the resistance is low like under 200 Ohms
thanks!
I found something better however, it’s stainless and gets good connection. But what’s better about it is it’s only about a 1/2 inch tall, so it keeps the jig low profile.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018Z3H30S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
