That was close…
I was about to create a large pocket cut in a MDF sheet with my brand new surfacing bit. The expensive one with replaceable carbide inserts.
Set everything up in my CAD program, imported the drawing in vCarve, and created my toolpaths. Setup everything in gSender and press GO.
What the hell! Why is the spindle moving way off to the centre? I’m thinking, oh well, that’s where it wants to start. But then it plunges 1mm into the MDF and starts the first Y movement . But instead of staying inside the MDF, it’s obviously going out of bounds. eStop is close by so I press it in a panic. Retract the spindle and noticed that the bit was millimeters away from hitting the t-bar bolts I was using as a hold down.
After trying to figure out what went wrong, I noticed that my vCarve job had an offset, which I didn’t notice during the job setup.
Serves me right for not following my checklist, which includes running an outline of the job to make sure everything looks good.