XCarve Breaking Bits like crazy after moving

Do you have a dial indicator? If not you should be able to hear a difference in how the spindle sounds now compared to how it sounded last week.

If the spindle bearings are fine and not worn out. Another thing to check on the gantry & spindle mount, is there any induced run-out from v-wheel wear in or from torque stresses when you moved the machine. If you grab the spindle mount with the steppers locked and the spindle off, can you noticeably deflect the bit by pushing, pulling or rocking the spindle mount? Those 1/32 inch mills don’t take much deflection at all to break. I still think you should carve a piece of foam board as a test and watch it.

It seems that I should test it but why would it always break on the same spot of the design… :frowning:

Because that is were the evil spirits live.

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Same forces at play at that location.

Sounds like run out. Cut some shape outlines in a soft material like foam and measure the width of the cut.

Have you checked to make sure that your wasteboard is level?

It could be that the position that your set your home position to is lower than the other corners and as such is trying to cut more than the bit can handle. With the 1/32 bits even a little bit to deeper cut can break the bit.

With moving the machine, could you have thrown it way out of square? Is your Z axis square side-to-side as well as front-to-back? How far off is your Z when you touch off the four corners of the work surface? Being able to use the 1/16 but not a smaller one that you were using before seems like what everyones saying about deflection: which could easily be caused by the machine simply not being ‘true’ as it was before it was moved. Picking up the machine by any two points with your hands surely would cause some flexing and throw everything out of however it was settled previously, which worked, so anything being slightly shifted will surely cause the symptom you are experiencing… at least to my mind.