Well, after having to buy a new gShiled and finally getting the homing sequence to work, it was on to the test carve. So today, I fired everything up and was pretty excited. My first problem was with the homing sequence once again. After it worked flawlessly last night, today when the Z axis lifted the Dewalt 611, the motor didn’t stop and the homing didn’t continue. At this point I’m going to do what others have done and just home the machine manually and forget about the limit switches. I’ve already spent way too much time troubleshooting them. Next problem was with the test carve design (The robot and some text). In my case, it had my name “Rob”. With my purchase of the X-Carve, I got a 1/4" High Speed Steel 2 Flute Upcut Spiral bit and a solid carbide 2 Flute Spiral Upcut (Ball Nose End) bit as part of the package deal. As I went through the setup steps, I couldn’t get past step 6 (choosing the bit size) because it didn’t like any of the bit sizes I entered. Not even the 1/16" bit size. Now you would think that the test carve graphic that is there by default, would be able to be cut with the bit that comes with the machine. I had to delete the robot portion of the design and change the font in order to use the 1/8" bit I had. The good thing is, it cut very nice and didn’t wander but the depth varied just a little. I don’t believe this was a machine issue. I think it was the piece of plywood I used. I’m sure it wasn’t dead flat as most plywood isn’t so all in all I’m very happy with the first cut. It’s just all of the other little problems that are starting to wear thin on my patience!
so I am confused lol (not being rude at all) but what is the question that you are asking in this post?
I believe you can throw the High speed steel bit that you have in the trash because its not going to last very long on your cnc unless you are cutting foam or wax try to always stick with solid carbide
and yeah really the homing switches are useless unless you are going to home to the exact same position and cut the same size of object every time and I dont imagine you will doing that unless you bought the machine for a business
I wired all mine homing switches up and then proceeded to break the z-axis and will revisit them when I want to turn them into limit switches
and it sounds like the issue you had with the carving in easel is the actual size of it really if your bit is saying it wont work its really only usually 1 of 2 issues and thats the overall size of the carve or that items are to close together if you absolutely have to have it that small them step the bit down to something like 1/32" or smaller but remeber when using these bits you have to go extremely slow and try to use the bit only where it is needed and simply do a tool change in the middle of the cut by creating 2 easel files for the same carve
but no dont get discouraged on any carve that you want to do remember the computer is only going to do what you tell it so act/think like a computer when trouble shooting why it says it wont cut
Your homing problem may be caused by your Dewalt plastic housing hitting the upper bracket where the pulleys are on top of the Z axis. This will disrupt the sequence and then it may ram your Z into the switch on your next try. You should also give UGS a spin.
EvannDalton, I guess I didn’t really have a question in my post did I? LOL. I probably should have worded things differently, like…Why is the test graphic of the Robot not set up to just carve it with the bit that comes with the machine? I mean, it’s to test the machine and make sure everything works right. Not to play around in Easel and learn the program. That should come after making sure the machine works!
I understand the concept of smaller bit, bigger graphic to get the program to accept the parameters but playing around with Easel before I got the machine, I never was able to get them accepted if I used certain fonts that Easel provides. I could make the text 31 inches wide and 20 inches tall and a 1/32" bit and still got red warnings. I assume because of the whole V bit situation. I could be wrong and I probably am but that’s what came to mind.
MRoss, I’ll give that a look tomorrow and see if that was the problem.