I don’t think it does. I’ve recently did a carve that skipped letters in the middle of a word. A word, mind you, that I typed out without editing!
Again, I’m more convinced that it’s slightly crazed ![]()
I don’t think it does. I’ve recently did a carve that skipped letters in the middle of a word. A word, mind you, that I typed out without editing!
Again, I’m more convinced that it’s slightly crazed ![]()
That’s true too.
I think that somedays, like my wife, it just wants to screw with me.
![]()
I used to watch Calcomp 965 plotters work. It was interesting to try and predict the moves.
Duplicate geometry would tear the paper from over saturation
Our Zeta Graphics plotters were built like tanks and had a voice-coil linear actuator for the pen-down movement. It developed enough force that we could run ballpoint pens at a really fast speed for draft plots (or anything that didn’t need the elegant liquid-ink lines). At the time the company folded we had developed vinyl-cutting prototypes using a swivel knife (shades of Stingray) that dropped in in place of a pen (we just adjusted the voice-coil current to set the cutting force), but Roland (I think it was) pretty much had that market tied up…
I had an idea for a production design and set the design up for stage running on my machine. The project would cut out 60 designs over the course of just under 4 hours. So, in theory, I could make two complete runs of the program for 120 pieces in one day. The problem I was running into was the machine program treated the whole design as one big progect and would randomly jump all over the table with long travel times to each part.
I was hoping for a singularity of one cross line of work at a time and then a second line and then when the machine started work on the third line, i could remove the first line of carvings and then replace with new material so it would be ready for the next run, and so and and so forth. This way I basically could run the machine from the time I got to my shop until the time I finished the second run cycle, completing 120 pieces per day. I needed 6 days of running to complete 6 different types of carves for a set of 6 items per set, which would give me 120 sets of completed designs.
I realized that the machine randomized everything, and made me think it hated me and didnt want to follow my desires for cutting, like a defiant son that would look at me and still reach over to touch something I just told him not to touch. Hahaha.
What I realized I was going to have to do was a workaround. I would have to create each carve as one individual carve and do this along the path I wanted the machine to carve in. This way I gained back control of the direction of the machine’s movement, reduced cycle times by a ton, because the machine wasnt traveling across the whole surface to carve a little over in the far corner and then traveling back to the front corner for a bit of carving and then back to another far corner.
So in essence, I got the boy (my machine) to listen and do what I wanted it to do my way, and now I smile at how obedient my machine is, even though it looks at me with scolding eyes while doing what I ask it to do. Lol
This is the very best story about a very naughty CNC machine. In my day I would have gotten a good ol’ spanking with a wooden spoon for being such an idiot! Can’t do that to my Pro5 though!! ![]()
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.