I have purchased the Altmil 4x4 and have it set up in may shop. It looks good. Once I put it all together I installed the table top and waste board. Installed a water cooled spindle. The spindle test works. Jogging the gantry moves and it homes ok. The problem I am having while using GSender is the software/machine will not run the surfacing part of the Gsender for surfacing. The machine will try to start the surfacing…moves a few inches then error code 10 appears. I clear the error code and start again. Then I get error codes for each motor. Just a brutal cycle. Its been over a month and I have not been able to use the Altmil. Any help out there?
Error code 10 is an e-stop error. The part where you say it moves a few inches indicates to me that you have exceeded your available axis move someplace. Note that the error is not necessarily happening right then and there. The move that exceeds the available space can happen any time during the requested surfacing operation.
The things to check:
Make sure the machine was homed
For surfacing, the start location (usually the front left corner of the table surface to be surfaced) must be set to be your x/y/z zero.
Make sure that the machine can reach the full area to be surfaced - manually go to the 4 corners of the area to be surfaced 0/0 to 0/maxx to maxx/maxy and to 0/maxy.
Verify every entry on your surfacing setup screen.
Verify that you have configured maximum axis travel for each axis correctly (part of the machine configuration and not part of the surfacing setup)
This is an extremely common error when you first start your adventure because you are trying to surface the entirety of the usable spoilboard area. Maybe set up your 0/0/0 somewhere well in the center of your table and only attempt to surface a small area, maybe 100 mm by 100 mm by 0.5 mm and see if that surfaces ok (set the z zero slightly above the spoilboard surface so that you ‘air cut’ instead of actually engaging the cutter with the spoilboard surface)
Anyway, its is extremely likely that this is an operator problem rather than a machine problem so go over everything with a fine toothed comb to locate the setup error.
Good luck!
I think Jens has some if not all merit points and I have nothing much to add to the topic of spoil board serfacing. I don’t have an altmill, limit switches nor a spindle and run an ancient version of gsender, and on top of that I never surfaced my spoilboard. I seem to be totally out kf specs for this topic.
However.. I am able to output stuff from a machine that does not have a flattened surface to begin with and that might just be what you need, to get some mileage on your machine. Wait, you might think, how can you run a machine that is not level to it’s machine bed?! Well, there are multiple way you can get away with it.
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Establish if your machine bed actually is in need of surfacing. To do so, pick up a small block of wood big enough to fit a touch block. Zero z on it, move the machine around the bed in say 5 inch steps and see how well the block fits at each point. I use this to see if I need to surface wood for signs and find that mostly I can get away without doing a full sweep because woods slopes up or down at the edges wich seldom get letters carved that far out.
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Use a waste board that is big enough for your project but smaller than your bed.
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surface the project only. If able use side clamping, or use material larger than your project and surface slightly larger than your project, clamping down outside that perimeter. Jup that can sometimes be exciting. Especially using a spiraling toolpath for surfacing because you like the effect.
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keep the surface of a project pristine and break down a design to leave small area toolpaths. I have made signs litteraly rezeroeing z at every next letter to preserve the roughnes of the material or because I could not get away with a single pass surfacing job. Or whatever reason there was at that time to go the extra mile of breaking down a design like that.
Ultamately surfacing isn’t an easy first project. It encompasses the entirety of your machines reach and many things can go frustratingly wrong or even end up catastrophic (think running a wide surfacing bit into the machine or crashing the dust boot.) I do think surfacing a machine bed should not be a first project at all. Start small, like Jens suggest.
My first project was trying to surface a small board and I managed to kill the router with that one, but I didnt crash my dust boot or surfacing mill or damage my machine bed. That’s what I am the proudest of. My machine bed has never been injured by mills.. paint yes. If my name was Picasso instead of Eddie, it would sell for a milliontrillion.
It’s thát good.
Anyhoo, hope you get to mill soon, and if you keep getting nowhere, please don’t wait months (whyyyy) to get help from sienci. They are there to help. Reach out to them.
To add to what @Jens and @Spamming_Eddie said, the instructions for surfacing do suggest disabling hard and soft limits if you need to surface past the defined limits. Just be careful when you do that, especially with a large surfacing bit.
If I were to disable limits and put in a large surfacing bit, I’d manually jog to the left and right to make sure the bit (and dust shoe if you are using it) clear everything.
You’ll probably want to surface without a dust shoe to get as close to the side rails. It’s a messy step which I prefer to avoid, especially with MDF.
@Spamming_Eddie’s solution of using wood slats and surfacing those is a good alternative that I have adopted for some projects.