I just purchased a pair of 1/16th end mill bits and was excited to get my project started when all of a sudden I noticed that when using the bit zero to set the x, y and x zero x and y did fine but when it came to perform the x function it plunged straight down into the hole instead of rising up and moving over the plunging down therefore breaking my new bit. It’s never done this before and would like to know why this happened. I’m going to try again today and hopefully after rebooting both my laptop and Shapeoko 4 XL it won’t happen again. Thank you.
I wrote a bit on this at:
if you’re still having trouble, let us know step-by-step:
- what you did
- what you expected
- what actually happened
with screen grabs/photos and we will look into this with you.
Thank you for your reply, I know now I need to proof my writing before sending it. I reread my post and got a little confused myself. When using the bit zero function it’s always performed flawless, until just recently. When setting up the bit zero on the lower left corner of my project, I placed my bit centered in the hole on the bit zero and performed the probe function. The bit moves to the left, then to the right, then forward, then back, then it’s supposed to re-center in the hole rise up and move over the bit zero itself. Instead of rising up and moving over to set the Z height, it just plunged straight down into the hole. It’s never done it before and this just happened recently. Again I’m gonna go try it again and see what happens. Thank you so much for your quick reply.
The only things which I can think of which might cause this are:
- configuring for the wrong sort of BitZero — this should be persistent, but maybe a preference got corrupted?
- lost steps on retract/movement — check the machine, esp. lubrication
I seldom use lower left corner but did a project that needed that. My SO3 would do the Z and then was supposed to move over and come down on the side (v1 BitSetter) but it would come straight down on the BitSetter. What I discovered is I could not jog withing 3 inches of the left side of my Y rail. I went in and increased the X range in the shapeoko.json file. I quit Carbide Motion and restarted. The shapeoko.json is only read when the CarbideMotion application is started. That fixed my problem. Not sure that is your problem but you can place the BitZero on the corner and jog to see if it can go past the side of the BitZero. If it cannot then if you physically have room you can modify the shapeoko.json file to give you more X travel. The BitZero movement is limited by the limits in the Shapeoko.json file.