I have been experimenting with exporting topographic maps for carving (ultimately I want to carve mountains and then laser etch ski tracks onto them).
Anyway, I was playing with some reclaimed pine, and ran a decent clearing operation with a 1/4 inch flat endmill. I was pretty happy with how it came out.
Next, I tried to run parallel passes with a ball-nosed endmill, and all was uneventful, until this happened.
No idea what could have really caused it, aside from the PC running gSender glitching out for a second? It wasn’t really going any aggressive speed, and was in the Y axis so it can’t be missing steps (both motors would have to miss the identical steps).
Any thoughts? The PC running gSender is more than powerful enough, and is running Linux. The connection is via Ethernet, using the onboard Ethernet adapter (not even the USB).
Anyway, I will soldier on - looking forward to making nice souvenirs of some ski trips.
Update - just reviewing a recording of it running, and turns out it was lost steps on one Y axis. I can see one side of the gantry hang up ever so briefly - I will see if I can extract the video and post it for all to see.
I have been meaning to do some maintenance - I suppose this is as good a time as any to adjust / replace V wheels etc to make sure everything is smooth.
EDIT - having a pain trying to get the video to export, sorry about that. Anyway, the machine needs servicing - might be backlash, might be something loose. In the video I can clearly see one side of the X axis skew in real-time.
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Export success! Exactly at the moment of glitch, so no waiting, and clearly why the carve failed. I’m glad to know it’s not a software glitch - should be easy to tune up the mechanical, it’s a bit overdue.
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Just keeps getting better… replaced the v-wheels, got everything cleaned up and rubbed down the lead screws and the surfaces the wheels ride on with silicon, set up a job, all goes well until…
… the workpiece came free of its clamps.
Pretty sure I have things tuned up mechanically - things were running really well for most of the job. Now I’m a little gun-shy - but at least since these are testing, I’m just using some old pine scrap.
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