I am a teacher and dont have access to this 24/7 obviously. However I am nervous to leave this on overnight working. Everything is locked down, however i still would be nervous to leave it.
Carbide motion doesn’t support a “pause” function that pauses the cutting tool correct? That would make me feel better, idk if thats any safer…
It has pause. Just don’t hit quit.
First, it depends oh your level of programming. Are you 100% sure it’s a good program?
Next, some will say to NEVER leave your machine alone, well, I come from industry, and unless that spindle is turning, it isn’t making you money. Meaning “Light’s Out” or unattended machine is quite normal, and something that I teach and do almost daily.
A cheap IP Network camera is also a great tool to check in on once in a while.
Feel free to ask a guy who does it all the time any questions that you may have.
PS I left my GRBL board on for almost 2-weeks, so no problem there either.
In a school situation, I would be careful, as the goals are not the same as in industry.
If cutting flammable material (especially wood), do not leave it unattended. A hangup in the program or of the machine can lead to enough frictional heat to get the dust burning.
If cutting materials of low fire risk, it is still not a good idea, but primarily because the nomad has no provision for detecting tool breakage or loss of position, meaning that an overnight run may just be wasted time and material in the end, or even a damaged machine.
I would recommend breaking each job up into a sequence of parts that can be run successively while the machine is attended. Most software will give reasonably accurate run time predictions. This is good practice, in any case, as real world jobs often need a sequence of setups due to workholding and positioning limitations. This is easy to do using Fusion or Inventor/HSM or SolidWorks/HSM (specify a new setup that is a copy of the previous). I don’ t know how easy it is with Carbide Create or MeshCAM, as I don’t regularly use them.
If you don’t want to break the job up, you can force pauses in the program several ways, but the easiest with the Nomad is request a tool change. You might define each tool twice (101 and 101a, for example) and change from one operation to the next. The machine will pause for the tool change, you don’t change it and resume if you are there, or just walk away with the tool change request on screen if leaving.
I would find out what the insurance company has to say.