Cutter took path of it’s own

CNC Machines Shapeoko Pro
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Brand new to my PRO XXL, second cut on it, I’m in the last 3 mins of the cut, 3 hours 34 mins in, literally 2nd to the last contour pass to finish the piece and the cutter just dives into the work piece ruining. I hit STOP.
I’ve looked at the file in CREATE and there is no errant tool path showing. Is there any other place to look to see why it deviated? Luckily it was a cheap piece of pine and not the actually piece, but I don’t want to get 3 + hours in again to have same thing happen.

Help!!

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Possible causes:

  • a mechanical difficulty — check pulley set screws, Z-axis belt tension (if using a belt drive)
  • an electronics issue — check the wiring and connectors
  • the endmill gradually working loose — check that an adequate length of shaft is in the collet and tighten using two wrenches per the instructions
  • the endmill getting pulled into the cut — keep tooling engagement as low as possible — esp. avoid slotting, where appropriate add geometry and cut as a pocket down to at least tab depth: Adding geometry to cut as a pocket with a finishing pass
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Did you figure out what happened with your project?

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I did not figure it out. I looked at all the things suggested above and couldn’t find anything obvious wrong. Perhaps it was the slotting that caused a hang up?
I did create a new tool path for the last part that failed so that it wasn’t “trapped”. Unfortunately i located the workpiece a little too far forward so there wasn’t enough wood for that last path to cut properly and i was a little sheepish about letting it run full path, so I paused after one pass.
Not sure if I understand what the cause was, but i’ll keep the “avoid slotting” in mind for future. Thanks both for interest in solving.

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