Fuzzy cuts on birch plywood

[LiamN (Liam Newcombe)]

Here’s a post about how to measure belt tension on your machine;

Measuring belt tension, squaring and calibration

A post about belt tension, how to measure it, what effect it has and why you need to manage belt tension in order to usefully calibrate and square the machine. As usual, no criticism of the machine here, in fact some quite clever design choices seem to have been made. The question of drive belt tension has been bugging me. How much you should have, how to check it and how it affects machine performance. I failed to find any quantitative data to use, so I went and started measuring; and found t…

and the YT video if you prefer, same content;

Shapeoko CNC Belt Tension, Squaring & Calibration

[zafirovski (Zoran)]

Thanks
I will try tonight and lets see.

[zafirovski (Zoran)]

So I was digging a lit more a , and I compare old files where I didn’t had problem with fuzzy cuts there was a divergence in plunge rate it was 12.5 now with fuzzy cuts is 25.0 for 1/4 amana 2 flut cutter .Is that possible ?

[Burly (David Flowers)]

@LiamN I was so excited to to see this post about the gates app I took my lunch hour go check it out. Belt tension topic has been somewhat elusive. l This is so easy to do with the Gates app. On the downside, I need to tighten up my belts a good bit. I thought they were guitar string tight but not quite. May explain some minor issues I have been having with clean cuts particular to tabs. On either side of the tab I get small grooves. This may be why. Thanks

[LiamN (Liam Newcombe)]

Great,

Don’t go over-tight though, the steppers may not like it too much, I’m running in the 60-80N range and that seems to be enough for the belts to behave as required by the design.

I’ve found no substantial benefit in terms of deflection or backlash from increasing belt tension beyond this point.