Need help with cnc machine

Community Discussion 📄 General
1

Hello!

I’ve been using my machine for a couple months now and trying to solve some problems I’ve run in to. I have the larger long mill and I use the vcarve and gsender programs.
The problem I have is sometimes the machine will not cut evenly.
For example: tonight I was using the pocket hole to cute out some baseball stitches . The first three stitches cut out fine but the other one did not cut as deep. The first few passes didn’t even carve into the wood.
Any tips on how to fix this? I’ve looked but can’t seem to find anything online that matches my question.
Thanks!!!

2

Hi @Addison welcome to the group!

Typically there are a few potential sources of Z axis irregularities:

  • check that the coupler between the Z motor and lead screw is tight
  • check that the bit is tight in the collet (always tighten with the two supplied wrenches, never with the red bit lock button)
  • check that the router is tight in its mount
  • ensure that you are not plunging into the work so quickly that the Z motor is losing steps

From my experience, an up-cut bit might pull itself into the work and a down cut bit might work in the opposite direction.

Good luck, let us know what you find, and we’re all looking forward to seeing what you create!

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Is your spoil board surfaced correctly? If one part or side of the table is farther away this can happen as well. I just recently noticed that my spoil board needs to be surfaced again. It was perfect but we have had a lot of humid weather and I think it threw my table and spoil board off.

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@Addison While it’s likely that the mechanical things that @elbarsal and @_Michael mentioned are the cause of your problem, if you post your .crv file, it may show something going on there.

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trying to upload the crv file, it is telling me new users can’t upload the file.

We just checked out the machine and everything was tight and ran well.
I’m thinking it could be the file. I just discovered I could edit the tool paths instead of making new one.
Could it be that I have too many tool paths on the file even if I am only saving one?

6

@Addison If you like, send me a PM and we will go from there. You can have as many toolpaths as you like on a file, so that will not be the issue.