Hello there!
I have been creeping the forum for awhile for tips and tricks and for the most part, I have been happy with the xcarve. But I have had it on several occasions were it seemed to have a mind of it’s own. Just for some background information, I have been using Adobe Illustrator for crating my designs. And then bringing them into Easel. Like I said earlier, I have made some cool stuff, but also having these weird issues. I don’t feel comfortable walking away from any project any more.
As you can see in the picture, the bit decided to take a weird path not in my design. Any suggestion or tip would be greatly appreciated!
was going to say check belt tension and verify they aren’t slipping. maybe make a mark on your belts at the begging of your run and see if it moves at all.
Also listen for stuttering or grinding noises… could be your steppers are skipping steps or belt teeth.
yes i had the same problem last week. see post
Cutting went crazy, normal, crazy again
I found wrong was only ONE of the Y belts had gotten loose. It would run find some of the time when go crazy, the forum help me with a lot of troubleshooting and turn out that the right size belt got loose, I was checking the belt on the left size because is close to the area i was working in.
So read that post for more troubleshooting, but i would start with the belts. Good luck
looks like we all replied at the same time. lol
Thanks for the reply! I have been checking and double checking my belts/pulley’s/screw’s and idler wheels before every carve. I’ve made it a habit to help rule that out. I’ll keep checking the forum for other hints and tips.
Thanks for the link DougHill! I read through it and I will will re-check my machine over again and possibly re-do my file and try again! thanks for the quick responses everyone!
Could you make the easel file public and post the link here for me to take a look at I just want to make sure that it is not in easel
http://easel.inventables.com/projects/hFKS9EVa6ojMCQMuwc8dzg#
Thanks WorkinWoods, I’m in the process of re-doing it and I’m going to give it another try. But let me know if you find anything!
Thanks Again
to me it looks like the Y axis is cutting out from thermal protection on the grbl, try lowering the current pot a hair on the Y.
Also just guessing from the fuzz looks like you are going deep and fast on those cuts, what’s your feed and RPM and bit type?
Thanks for the reply Gary, I’ll try to adjust my y axis and see what happens. I’m cutting soft maple and I’m using the recommended settings of 28in/min feed rate and 9in/m plunge rate with a depth per pass of 0.028 inch. Which I didn’t think those settings were to wild. The bit I’m using is a .25 2 flute up spiral bit.
so I noticed a couple things easel is trying to generate some really werid tool paths
I noticed that in the design you have 2 line or outlines instead of 1
You said you were using ai to export the vector file that you create right? if you are just trying to cut the outline of this shape then you need to just export a single line in the design and not have these 2 lines do you have the original ai file by chance that you can upload?
You had the cut set to cut on the outside and ■■■ you can see its trying to cut the design twice on either side of the 2 lines as you can see here with the 2 tool paths that it is generating
This is confusing easel because you can change it to cut on path and it only creates 1 tool path but it is having werid things happen to it I really think in this case the model needs to be improved a little bit you can see the weridness here with on path cutting
and correction it is still trying to cut the model twice you just have to zoom way in to see it
it doesn’t really explain why it took are hard left hook when cutting but I have found when you confuse easel bad things happen so we need to take a look at the model and get that fixed first when you export from ai this should correct this issue
if you provide the file I might be able to open it up in one of my other cad programs and see if I can fix it on my end and then send it back to you
I hope that help let me know
That looks like normal up-cut fuzz. The cut itself looks acceptable. Those settings can be increased substantially, once your issue is sorted out. Start at like 20 ipm plunge, 40 ipm, .08 DOC. It would be a little faster for you and if it works great, increase from there (starting with DOC).
but a worse bottom edge lol really user preference a upcut tool will evacuate the chips better for hardwood
just make sure its held down tight
a compression spiral might be nice for both edges but probably not really the best in this situation
heck soft maple you might even step her up to 60 or 70 ipm lol with a good tool but yeah by looking at the picture it looks like it is trying to cut a wide trough aka cutting twice how long did that take to cut before it messed up?
what sorta tool are you using
Brand
carbide or hss
where did you buy
link?
also the easel file you provide was using a .125" tool what that not correct?
I have a feeling that this might be a “vulnerable” machine. Hence the modest reco. 
lol what you mean modest reco?
20/40/.08 instead of 60/80/.2" DOC.
Wow! thanks for all of the quick responses guys! yeah I noticed that it wanted to do a double line and was unsure as to why. I am new to easel and CNC’s somewhat. But I am very comfortable in Illustrator.jewerly_cut_final.ai (1.1 MB)
