hey all. im setting up a square work area on my machine and had a question about storing a work zero. I have a rather intricate piece im cutting that has to come off the surface board , get worked on and then go back to the exact same spot. so im putting down some extruded aluminum pieces to make a square jig/thing. its about 2 inches in X and 2 inches up Y. I want to store that intersection as 1 of my work zeroes I could return to. is that a thing I can store in easel? I would want to keep my machine zero but I would love not having to find that location every time I want to get back to this specific zero. if anyone has any advice I would love it. have a great day
As long as you are not rotating the position or anything…
As long as you have homing switches and a way to locate the material in the exact same position, you can set your work zero position and subsequently go as far as turning your machine completely off. When you power the machine back up, all you have to do is home the machine and then have the machine use the last work home position when you go through the carve initiation process.
Just a warning, after homing the machine, I would manually move the machine to within the work area where the stock is that way when the carve starts and the machine lowers to the Origin Safety Height and rapids to the work X, Y zero position it does not crash through the aluminum extrusions placed for the bump-stop.
The work zero position is retained in the EEPROM of the controller as X, Y, Z offsets from the machine home position.
I hope that makes sense…
{:0)
Brandon Parker
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IF you need to do additional carves that use a different work origin between the 2 carves there is another method of storing Jig Locations onto a different area of that same EERPOM chip, BUT IF your plan is to do these 2 back to back, then the method Brandon provided really is the best and easiest method. 
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It makes total sense. I really appreciate the heads up about starting inside my stock area. That makes a ton of sense. Thanks a bunch. I really appreciate it.
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Seth, thanks again. This also makes a ton of sense. I am going to do the original carve and then remove the piece do the work and put it back without any other carve between. In theory I could just leave my whole unit powered and when I go to carve the next phase just “use last zero” right? Do I need to run the whole power down sequence noted above? Either way it appears easy both ways. Thanks
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You definitely could leave it on and select use last. I would re-probe the Z in case the wood moved at all (warp, bow, cup) just to re-set the Z to be safe but for X,Y yeah jumping right into use last would work perfectly.
By leaving it all on and connected over USB you’re basically eliminating the need to re-home (as long as you’ve set it so that the steppers stay locked of course, but I think you’ve already done this) so that’s up to you, If the in between process isn’t too lengthy, I’d probably just leave it on.
Personally I stain and apply clear coat (wipe on type) while my workpiece it in clamps on the cnc fairly often, I put a little fan on it to expedite curing, then run the next carve operation as soon as its dry, which is usually only about 15-20 mins with water based stains and water based wipe on poly and that fan blowing away… and I leave the cnc on during this of course
I’m curing resin in a slot so my resin is hard in about 3 hours. I don’t have an issue with leaving my machine up for that long. Should I have an issue with that?
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I wouldn’t have an issue with 3 hours. Plenty of people leave the X-Carve sit idle overnight during a long carve when they want to sleep without watching it and just pause it in place during the night and resume in the AM.
I mean I’ve run my larger cnc for 16 hours straight 3d relief jobs and a desktop cnc for over 40 straight. Letting it sit idle isn’t any worse than actually running it.
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