Checks after bad crash/Cautionary tale

[MadManMilla (Jake Miller)]

After 2 years of owning my machine I have finally crashed it.

Scenario: I was milling a relatively tall piece of stock ~2.5" along Z. This is a production piece I routinely make so the CC files are tested and proven. HOWEVER, the last time I ran this file I encountered a disconnect and modified the offending contour path to start at the depth already cut. As you may have guessed, I did not save this modified file as its own nor did I remember to change the contour path to start at the top of the stock. The result: 0.5" of my 201 rammed into the work piece during its rapid, oof. I was 1-2 seconds getting to the emergency stop so the machine was stalled/stopped by the crash for sometime.

I have checked the squareness of the gantry and it is fine, the spindle and bit are surprisingly fine, but there is a clicking noise coming from one set of wheels when traveling in the Y directions.

Is there a checklist or routine to go through specifically after a crash or should I just conduct routine maintenance?

Something something, be responsible (not lazy) with your file versions!

[Rizzo (Eric Risbrudt)]

I can’t believe that nobody has piped up yet.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Ideally all this would be covered in the assembly instructions for the machine in question.

After my last bad crash I had to loosen all the hardware for the bed, nudge things back into square, and then tighten things up (maybe it wasn’t as squared up as I thought?), and I also took that opportunity clean thoroughly and lubricate and re-check all the hardware.

For a real bad crash on an SO3/4 one might need to replace some V wheels — a Maintenance Kit will let one rebuild a machine to pretty much like new:

Shapeoko Maintenance Kit

and is a good thing to have for any machine.