I am carving a 2’ x 4’ flag and the first thing I did was pocket out a .38" deep work space which gives me a 1" boarder around the flag. I am having issues getting the stars to cave. I want the stars to be .25 deeper then the pocket but every time I try to carve the starves it just air caves and doesn’t remove any material. I did the same thing for the stripes and went .125" deeper then the pocket depth and had no issues. I cant set the Z axis zero in the pocket because it will cave through the raised boarder after finishing. Any ideas? I’m lost. This flag has been a challenge to say the least b/c it requires tiling and multi two stage carves for the look I’m trying to achieve.
Due to size I have to tile this project. No big deal. as you can see there is a boarder around the flag and everything is carved inside that pocket. When doing stripes, I added .125" inches to the over all pocket depth and it worked perfectly. I did the same thing for the stars and all it does it carve air. Why?
Did you rezero after you put the vbit in?
Yes sir. I cant explain it. I feel I’m pretty good at trouble shooting but this one is whooping my butt.
Maybe i am miss reading but why can you not zero off the pocket. If the stars are only going to cut .2 and you have that much material left?
If I zero inside the pocket and not from the lower left corner on top of the boarder the v-bit will carve through the boarder when returning to X Y zero. I don’t want to mess up the raised boarder.
a better question is why can I do it with an end mill bit for the stripes but not with a v-bit for the stars. mysteries of the universe. haha
Looks like you have a seperate file for the stars. Why not set you xyz zero in the middle of that file just to cut the stars. Then you can zero off the pocket in the middle and when it is done it will go back to the middle.
yea I will mess that up for sure.
After hours of contemplating the meaning of life I decided to try and trick the CNC into thinking I am the man. I put the original pocket cut behind the stars and raised the depth .03 so it wouldn’t carve it again and ruing the pocket. I set up a two stage carve with the biggest bit I have (.5" end mill). Instead of picking a roughing pass, I went straight to the detail pass. Now…the v-bit will still do the outline of the pocket but then it goes straight to the stars. I am smarter then the machine… suck it X-Carve. I will say that this can probably be fixed with some simple Easel updates. At a minimum, Easel should allow users to pick a starting depth to cut tool paths regardless of Z zero on top of the work piece. You can have that for free Inventables. Just send me a X-Carve Pro.
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