Hopefully the brilliant folks on the forum can assist me. My X-Carve was working fine and then all of a sudden after one carve today it started stuttering on any curve contours. It cuts fine on the X / Y / diagonal But when cutting circles it starts to stutter. You can clearly hear it stutter and is different from a normal cut. Also when cutting a rounded corner square it will cut the sides fine but when it comes to the corners stutters then goes back to normal once it is done with the corner. It never used to do this and only today has started. I’ve checked my belt tension and also checked my V wheels / eccentric nuts. I have checked to ensure the axis’s are square. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!!!
Are you carving a vector image that might have a gazillion small lines forming the arcs?
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Brandon Parker
If in Easel, click on your design to select it and hit E.
All nodes will now be visible, do you have a gazillion of them like Brandon is on about?
Or do you simply see a few nodes scattered around?
Don’t know if this helps but if I turn my feed rate back during cutting to 20% the stutter is completely gone. In my settings for my 60deg v but I have feed rate 80 inches/min and plunge rare 20 in/min.
Turning the feed rate down could cause other issues because the the bit might start rubbing the material instead of slicing through the material as it should be doing.
The stuttering should not be a HUGE issue if the small lines/arcs cannot be avoided as long as the feed-rate is within reasonable limits. This is just the machine speeding up/slowing down rapidly. You might however loose steps if your feed-rate is too high.
You might also see these small straight lines/arcs in your carving if it is very prevalent. It all depends on how it looks vs. what you want/need for that.
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Brandon Parker
After closer inspection, when I turn the feed rate down it still stutters. However it is less noticeable in the carving. I also tried to not carve anything and run the job with the bit height an inch above the workpiece. It still stutters. I just don’t get how it worked perfectly with all the same software / settings for years and just all of a sudden started stuttering on curves. I currently use Vcarve Pro and PicSender for my jobs which has been extremely reliable. As a test I tried easel and it is the same result. It’s very frustrating!!!
Try restarting the computer. I know it seems unrelated, but you might have something slowing down the serial communication.
Funny you should mention that. I just finished rebooting and still having the issue. I’m not quite sure why all of a sudden this has started happening. What’s weird is it works great on straights and diagonals.
Does it happen if you do an aircut (router off, zero set above everything)?
How about with a really simple vector, with curves, drawn in V-Carve?
Yea it does it when I air cut. I made a real simple job to test consisting of straight lines, diagonals, and small / large circles. It works perfect on the straight and diagonal lines but as soon as it starts on the circles or corners of a box it starts to stutter. It’s almost like power surges to the motors if that makes sense. I adjusted the pots and they all seem good as they work great on everything else.
In every way, this sounds like a USB issue. Anything else open on the computer?
What post processor are you using?
Can you post a short video of it “air carving” to demonstrate what exactly it is doing?
I have experienced what I believe you are describing several times due to arcs in a design being form by very short straight lines.
I think we just need to confirm exactly what you are describing …
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Brandon Parker
I couldn’t get the video to upload here so I sent it to my YouTube channel.
Sample stutter video
Also just to note it never used to do this on curves. Just started today for no reason. I did have to increase my pots a little bit about a month ago due to issues with v carving. I’m trying to determine if the controller could be crapping out. It is the arduino and gShield and has been constantly running since I bought it.
I’m actually using a Mac which runs Parallels to run my VCarve Pro and PicSender. It has been running like this fine for a year. I closed everything down and ran an air carve from Easel using the Mac driver and chrome to eliminate Parallels. It does the same exact thing on curves. I will try another pc tomorrow and test.
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Whats your $11 value?
Can you share a Easel project where this phenomenon exist?
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Can you just pull all of your settings from the Machine Inspector?
$12 might be of interest as well; $11 is “Junction Deviation (mm)” and $12 is “Arc Tolerance (mm)”
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Brandon Parker
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I just noticed 11 and 12 are all zeroed.
Change those to $11=.01 and $12=.002