There was one hand on the estop and the mouse was actually 16” from the bit….
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Pretty nice …. but I was expecting you to loose half your hand when you had that huge bit running right next to the mouse!
Question: The last cut was making some pretty horrid noises. I would have reduced feed speed. Since I really don’t know, is that sound normal ???
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Hi Jens,
What you hear is oscilation within the makita smurf. I haven the same sounds comming of mine when using large bits or agressive cuts (that cutout Robert used seemd brutal, but you can hear the smurf moan when the bowl bit in the beginning of the video is crossing the grain too.) It comes down to oscilations exitting the smurf at the more loser components, being the hold button and more profoundly the speed dial. These relative lose components are amplifying the fibrations caused by the scattering of the bit.
Since smurfs are perty much handpalm router ment to maybe use for short routing jobs like roundovers or a slot here and there, we longmill users are somewhat torchering them for hours. I get why they scream and I get why the screams get louder when they age beyond their warranty period. You are litteraly hearing the brushes wear down.
You get used to the screams of agony and come to enjoy it, even hear subtel variations within and know the bit hit a knot or a void within the wood or if its crossing grains or running with it.
I could go on and on about woodboarding smurfs, but azrael is scratching my knee caps and wants to be fed.
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Same here. Was kinda looking away just in case.
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Nice video.
I know it’s a waste board, but it still has a price tag. If you wanted to you could compensate for the 0.69 stock and the 0.75 file a couple of ways.
The first way is by zeroing to the surface of the material and then moving up by 0.06 and resetting the Z zero there.
There is also another way that produces the best results in my experience. Use the paper method to put the bit at the spoilboard surface and then instead of zeroing the Z axis you can click on the Z coordinates in gSender, enter -0.75 and hit return. Since the max cut depth of the file is -0.75 and you set -0.75 to the spoilboard surface your through cut should be spot on.
EDIT: I agree with the others about starting a file with your hand so close to the router. If there was a mismatch between the machine and file origins, or just the fickle finger of fate at work, the mill could move in an unexpected direction.
Have fun and be safe so we can continue to see your work!
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Thanks for the tip I was asking awhile back on purchase files with G code already calculating the wood depth but buying the wood already surface and not being the correct size has been a problem. I have tried a few ways with no success without altering something. This is just the beginning until I can purchase the software to create my own files working with the vectric software at the moment…I will try your process on my next one….
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Just note I had one hand on the Estop and this was being done because of the video also notice I had no vacuum attach for a cleaning shot….
Ahhh, goood, when the mill rips your hand off you can just hit the stop button 
For most toolpaths it shouldn’t be a problem at all. I think the majority of files you’ll find will have zero at the material surface so surface based features like lettering, pockets etc will be fine and you just need to adjust for through cuts.
If you do run across a file where the spoil board was used for zero all the paths in gSender’s visualizer would be above the grid instead of below and it would be the surface features that needed adjusting.
As far as the mouse situation goes I think the camera angle made it look closer than it was. The LongMill Mk2 has a default maximum travel rate of 4000 mm/min which is just under 3 in/sec giving you 5 seconds and some change at 16" to get out of the way.
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