Pocket Signage

Ball nose for for final clean up of letters. Well at least that was the plan. Did I not plan well?

I have about 150-175 hrs total but this is the first of pocket work.

I would check that the z-axis is square to the wasteboard or there is not up/down play in the axis.

The smaller bit for pocket cleanup is used to get into tight corners, so a smaller endmill is best, not a ballnose.

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@ErikJenkins ok I’ll take a look later tonight, and give an update.

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I checked the z axis and found it off by 1/16th give or take, I also noticed some movement in the axis. The movement looks as thought the wheels ie. x carriage is not tight against the rails.

I do find at certain pocketing or thru cut if the x maker slide is too high and the bit is fully seated in the router the lower wheels physically slide off the rail causing the whole assembly to shift and leave chatter and bad surface marking.

Just adjusted the maker slide to be 90 degrees to table in both directions. Trying another cut tomorrow and post outcome.

I would also suggest lowering your plunge rate. I have mine typically around 10-15 in/min, but that might be a bit conservative.

Fixed the maker slide issue with all the wheels. I ended up retighting them with blue lock tight and made the proper adjustments, all is secure. I did a another trial run and it helped but not cured.

I did a check of the levelness of the table and found it lower on the right side of the table. Thinking I might add a sacrificial waste board and flatten this out .

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What is the resolution going to do?

If it helps, I addressed the issue of squaring the spindle to the wasteboard in my video on making a secondary wasteboard. It’s in this thread: X-Carve Maintenance/Troubleshooting Videos - Add Your Own! - #8 by RobertA_Rieke

Are you saying the screen resolution affects the quality of the cut?

I really appreciate your time and effort in these videos. From the beginning of my purchase they have come in great use. Thanks again and I’ll check it out tonight.

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I’m always glad to hear they’re making a difference. If it helps, I’m trying to do a series of quickie videos every couple weeks to address random things related to the X-Carve. The video coming out tomorrow at noon (mountain time) is going to show how I went from SketchUp to SVG to Easel. :smile:

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Yes it is. That only changes the screen resolution. It makes no difference to the generated tool path.

Actually, it does.

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Good Morning Erik,

Yes this is more complex than I first thought, but it appears that while the model resolution does determine the number of discrete points contained within the model. This becomes relevant when scaling or transforming the model. For example if you import a 3D model that is 3 inches by 3 inches by 1 inch and then you wanted to scale it to 24x24x6 you would loose considerable detail unless the original model representation was stored as a very high resolution model.

Like a digital photo, if the starting resolution is low, it may look fine when printed as a 3x5 print, but if you attempt to scale it to poster size the low resolution of the original photo will become very obvious in the poster sized print.

This would also apply if I converted text to vectors and then rotated or scaled up the vectors. While the vectors are at the original size and orientation, increasing the model resolution would not make any difference. Increasing the model resolution would only be beneficial if I wanted to scale up or transform the vectors.

So I stand corrected, the model resolution can affect the tool path, but only has discernible effect when importing 3D models or scaling up or transforming vectors. The larger the model is scaled the more important the the starting model resolution becomes.

This is a good description from Vectric

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Update to the grooves in the pocket process. I created a new waste board and leveled it out. Once this was done all seemed well until the chattering of the x axis again. So back to the drawing board and try some other trouble shooting.

I may just disassemble and reassemble with a through cleaning and tighting of the usual suspects.

Checkout New_Brit_Workshop some additional videos.