Good Afternoon Makers. I wanted to share this video with you. I run my X-Carve Pro everyday and I run into issues every now and then. I figure I’d share my experience with this group so you can learn from me.
So, I was carving out some 0.60 plywood and everything was going great until the first cutout was completed. My machine was about to move to the next cut out but the Z control didn’t move up enough before shifting. You can see how it cut across my material and broke my 1/4 bit. I run my carves very conservatively. Feed rate 150, depth per pass 0.09 with a 1/4 bit.
Once my bit broke I hit the kill switch and started to assess the issue. Once I gain control back on easel, I was unable to raise the gantry. The controls only allowed me to move down; not up. I even tried to home the machine and you can see how that didn’t work. So I used my key board controls and lifted the gantry with my hand to raise it. I noticed the gantry just needed a little assistance with my hand. After that I homed the machine and used my vacuum and air hose compressor to throughly clean out any saw dust that collected on the screw shafts X,Y and Z. I used a little WD-40 to lube up the shafts and jogged it back and forth; side to side and up and down the full lengths or the machine. I also jogged the Z up and down through every setting possible. 1”, 0.10”, 0.01” and 0.001”
After all that I ran the carve again and had great success.