X-Carve Maintenance/Troubleshooting Videos - Add Your Own!

Sorry, it popped into my head and I couldn’t resist…

It’s not necessarily a maintenance or troubleshooting video, but here’s a video I made showing how to go from Google SketchUp to Easel.

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Oo, this is a handy forum post! I just done a new carving… First hour everything worked perfect! Carve looks great… 10 min later I started a new carve, my machine lost steps. I’ve encountered this problem before, when there is “to much” dust on the rails,it shifted a mm or so. But, if I see your x carve, it’s even more dusty then mine! So, maybe I did something wrong… Aah well, I’ll use your videos as a guidance :wink:

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My X-Carve gets pretty dusty, but I haven’t had much of a problem with it. I don’t let it get too bad though, since the MDF dust will tend to compact into a grayish scale that takes more than a quick wipedown to remove.

Thanks for sharing the info.:grinning:

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look red wire is out so abcd is not the problem lol

Thank you for this video!!!

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I’m about to embark on some mods like your linear Z idea. I like your longer movement to adj the steps.

Thanks

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How do I check the calibration of my machine using Vectric desktop and UGCS?

@RobertA_Rieke I have watched your video and think I can do this. My xcarve works great, most of the time. Occasionally when I doing a long carve, say 40 minutes or more, it will just freeze with no error message. I am using picsender. Would this be something that is caused by potentiometers not being adjusted properly? attached is the most recent gcode that my machine just stopped carving at 70%.Caleb.nc (85.6 KB)

I was having a similar problem, the machine stops in the middle of the carve about 50% of the time. Possible causes I considered:

  1. UGCS, 2. USB to PC cable problem (cable was older and long), 3. PC problem, 4. X-Carve problem (X-controller upgrade WAS incorporated), 5. 115 VAC problem (vacuum and X-carve are on the same circuit, possibly introducing noise). Cheap and easy things first.

Replaced the USB cable with a shorter new cable. On the PC, made sure that it’s not doing anything else. That is, has open browser windows, mail, or any other things that might generate an interrupt that caused UGCS to glitch. I had purchased PIC sender and had it in reserve to eliminate UGCS but did not use.

Result of only replacing the USB cable and off-loading the PC was that I haven’t seen any stopages yet. Can’t say that I have THAT many hours to verify fix. Can’t prove, but if you don’t have the X-controller upgrade, I would guess that you could have noise on wiring to the Arduino. I had some problems with the Arduino version when I first tried to get the Z cal mode to work. Fix was to do a better job with signal grounding. Good luck.

having some calibrating issues, Machine fine tuning/ calibration - #3 please help me

One more thing to think about if you haven’t already. I replaced fluorescent lights over my X-carve with LED and stoppage disappeared. Perhaps EMF from the ballast and a poorly shielded cable were to blame?

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Hi Robert.
First off i wanted to thank you for all your videos. They are very informative and I truely appreciate since I’m still a rookie at this. I’m looking to make 3d models out of wood and at the end of the stepper calibration video you mention obtaining quality machine shop work with the x-carve as long as you run it nice and slow. When you say nice and slow in the case of wood material, whats speeds are recommended so the z axis belt doesn’t slip or anything of the sort. I know it all depends on the stock material but what parameters would you recommend?

Again, thank you for all your work and videos and any input will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time._

I can’t find anything about how to make it move 700 mm in one step either. Please help. I think ours is off and have checked everything else out. Thanks!!

@JenniferVanGorden. When you select carve you get a drop down menu withe jog controls. At the bottom you have setting such as .1 or 1. The will move the machine that amount. You can use mm or inches. In the small box enter 700 make sure you are in mm. It will move that amount when you click on the desired arrow. Hope this helps you

In the console in the machine inspector
G21 (mm mode)
G91 (relative/incremental motion mode)
G0 X700 (rapid move 700mm to the right)
G90 (back to absolute mode

Hi Robert. I know this is a really old thread, but I’m new to the x-carve community. When I start the calibration carve, the carve of the circle seems to drift to the left. So I end up with more of an oval and the center piece looks like it has steps. Can you direct me to what the issue might be and a possible fix?

Thanks,
Bryan

Good morning Bryan, this issue is usually because of lose belts. With the belts not tensioned properly it tends to miss steps and that’s how your circles become ovals and your squares become rectangles. Keep running the test carves and incrementally tighten the belts. Eventually you will get a perfect circle.