Hey all, I am trying to work on a 2’x4’ piece, I am designing so that I can carve 1/2 of the piece, rotate it 180 degrees on my x-carve, then carve the other half. I am having issues with after rotating the carves that meet eachother not lining up. They are right around 1/8" off in both X and Y axis.
I have squared my machine, made sure work piece is square to machine, verified my stepper calibration is dead on. The machine returns to 0 so I do not believe it is missing steps(and it happens the exact same every time) I am drawing a blank on what to look for to get these carves to line up. Here is a what my test looks like in vectric.
Test Carve before splitting in half and rotation
First Carve
After Rotating the board 180 degrees
The 2nd carve is always 1/8" to the left on the X axis and about 3/16" short on the Y axis.
Any ideas I would appreciate it.
If you have home switches, I would make home the x0,y0 to your work. Then I’d home the machine after you turn the work. I’d also do a test cut with a digital caliper and make any changes to the step calculation for the motors. The use of 40 for $100 and$101 may not be accurate enough.
Typically when tiling the material is not rotated.
Search tiling on this forum
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I see most tiling is done using a reference hole in the offcut of the piece, in this case I am using the entire 2’x4’ piece so I do not have anywhere to drill a reference hole.
This is why I was rotating instead of sliding, I haven’t really found much that would solve the whole sliding without having a reference hole.
You could make a reference mark in the edge of the material and move accordingly.
Are you doing this in Easel? Can you share the project?
Rotating the piece should be fine as long as you’re design and setup allow for it.
