I am having problems with surfacing my spoil board using gsender 1.5.6. I have both the hard and soft stops disabled and the dimensions set up IAW both the directions and the video. When I start the program instead of coming to the front left of the machine it goes to the back left and starts cutting it cuts a few inches and then I get an error 10 E stop enabled. I have reset this several times and the last time it buried the bit all the way until it hit the collet nut. After I got the bit out of my spoil board I looked in the description of the file and it lists 3 for max cut depth even though surfacing tool has the max depth at .09. Every time I have tried to generate the g code t still doesn’t send the correct max depth.
Why am I getting the E stop alarms and why won’t the correct max depth be generated in the g code?
There’s no reason to disable the hard and soft limits if the machine is configured properly. You should also run the homing cycle.
Run the homing cycle (doesn’t need to be done every time. I do it when I power cycle the SLB)
Jog to the front left and set your xy zero (see note below)
Jog to the surface and set your z zero (or use your auto-zero touch plate
run the surfacing job
Don’t forget to take the diameter of your surfacing bit in consideration when setting your zeros and your limits to make sure you won’t hit anything. For example, the left position on my Altmill is about 30mm from the y rail. A 50mm diameter surfacing bit would come very close to that.
Thanks for the help. I turned off the stops because that’s what the instructions said to do. I did set the x0,y0 and used the probe for z. I will turn on the stops and repeat the process again and see what happens.
@LarryLSimmons You’re right, the instructions do say to turn the limits off. I never did and didn’t have any problems. Remember to re-enable them if you do disable them.
@LarryLSimmons I just tried it without disabling the limits and it did give Alarm 2 like mentioned in the instructions. I didn’t have any problems with the limits because my XY zeros were likely inset a bit (my spoilboard doesn’t go all the way to the edges).
My note on taking into consideration the bit diameter stands. Unlike using a pocketing toolpath in vCarve, it looks like the g-code generated by the surfacing tool does not compensate for the bit diameter. So if your XY zero is at the front left (whit X0 being 30mm from the Y rail) and you use a 50mm diameter surfacing bit, it will mill 5mm from the rail.
If you surface by creating a pocketing toolpath in vCarve (and likely other CAM software), it would mill inside the boundary you define.
X & Y: This is the max dimensions you wish to surface. These sizes will be determined by the size of your bit, and should only be used as a starting guide. If using a large surfacing bit, you may need to decrease the dimensions.
Thanks for all the help. I do not know how I got those dimensions but they were really out to lunch. I also think I was setting X0 and Y0 incorrectly. I did notice that when I set Z up using the auto zero plate at .099mm it was still above the surface so I set it to 1 and it still was still not surfacing so I ended up setting Z using the paper method and it worked just fine. So, lessons learned LOL.
i have had problems with the surfacing program adding extra “Z” cuts when specifying certain x-y size cuts. make sure you look at the tool path from a front/side/isometric direction before running the surfacing routine. i usually end up just making a pocket cut and specify the same settings and works without adding a bunch of “Z” tool paths.
