I am having an issue with an inlay project. The Maple male component(the inlaid piece) is not carving straight. The Cherry female pocket looks fine. Nice straight lines. Both are from the same vectors. The female is flipped as a mirror image. So notice the carving in the circled areas. Since it is a symmetrical design, the design was made by creating the basic shapes and copy/rotating them. This may account for the symmetry of the bad spots at these locations. I am using Vectric vcarve pro on S3xxl. I have done several inlays and have not had this type of problem. I am looking at possible machine problems now such as belts wheels etc. I can’t seem to find any crooked vectors that would account for the distorted lines and as I mentioned the female piece is fine. So If anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate it.
I’m also using Vectric and have had this same issue. What I find was that I had extra nodes in the design file and going into ‘node edit mode’ and deleting them solved it for me.
I’ve got a really old version or I’d ask you for the design file for review, not backward compatible though I think.
I’ll extend Mike’s offer - I have the latest version and am happy to check the file, just in case.
Mike, Gerry you may be right. There is an extra node. I did not notice it at first. I had to zoom in alot to see it and it is consistent with the problem areas. So I have cleaned it up. Checking the machine yesterday I also found that I have a bad belt on the left rail. Not sure when that happened. But I think it happened after most of the inlays were milled so not sure that is the issue but I have ordered replacements. When I am back up and running I’ll post back the results. Thanks for the advice.
Were the extra nodes near the problem areas?
Looking forward to seeing the final result!
Yes they were and I removed them. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. So a number of things were wrong. Removed the extra nodes. That fixed the problem areas. The test piece I did months ago worked fine. Somewhere along the journey I got the flat and start depth backwards. Must have been one of those senior moments. That accounts for the thickness issue. Left belt replaced. Replaced z axis V wheels. Found some play in the z axis. Discovered my router was set too high in the mount. Since I am using 1/4 inch material and a 1/16 inch bit (they are quite short), the bottom z axis wheels were traveling below the z rails causing a really bad situation and a bad cut. I also bought a new bit to rule out a dull bit. This is the result. It does fit snugly in the female piece. But you can see some tear out which I suspect to is due to the soft maple I am using as well as the cut leads to a very fine sliver of wood. So I believe I have resolved all the issues. I may slow down the vcarve feed/speed a bit and see if that helps with the tear out. I appreciate the suggestions.
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