I’ve surfaced my waste board with both large and small bits. With either I can’t get an even distance from gantry to the waste board. The difference left to right is about 0.015 and front to back 0.03 or 0.04. When doing primarily engraving this is horrible and I’m having to break the carves into annoying small sections.
Any ideas what could be causing this?
Surfacing the wasteboard only makes the wasteboard parallel to the gantry, not the surface of the workpiece Are you also surfacing the workpiece in the CNC prior to these engravings?
Alternatively you can try out this shimming method I sometimes do to get the top surface of a board parallel to the gantry plane. . .
I’m checking the height of gantry to waste board immediately after surfacing and it isn’t even. Thoughts?
Scott,
A properly tuned and calibrated X-carve should get you. .075 to.13mm
Call this resolved. I checked it again and it does seem like a not properly planed board to be engraved, not waste board issue. Sorry. I really should get new calipers. The ones that came with xcarve aren’t great…
I understand that surfacing on the machine before engraving is the best solution, but it also isn’t great if the goal is to engrave into a painted surface. Two-three coats of paint while it takes up cnc space isn’t fun.
