I’m about to pull my hair out. Thank God, I’m actually bald.
I contacted the people at Support. Below is a picture of what they wanted me to do. Basically, disassemble the motors from the machine and plug them directly into the motherboard to see if they rotated in sync and smoothly during an initialization attempt.
I followed instructions to the letter and ran the test as instructed.
I fully expected the bad motor to reveal itself; did it? Of course not; it behaved perfectly. I then switched the motors on the motherboard and ran the test again just to be sure. Same results. Both motors spun smoothly and perfectly in synch.
At that point, I figured something was wrong with the connections, so I reassembled the machine and rewired up the connections just has they were before. I conducted an initialization.
Did the motor misbehave? OF COURSE NOT! The machine ran perfectly fine! Now I know how my students felt when I taught computers back in the old days. They would raise their hand and yell across the lab, “Mr. Massey this computer is not working. It’s messed up.”
When I walked over the computer was working perfectly fine. My student would look at me and say, “Honest, it wasn’t working.” Evidently the Shapeoko machines know when you are ratting them out to the support folks. Amazing!
So, currently my machine is running perfectly. Both Y motors are in synch and running smoothly. The vibration on the left side is gone. The gantry is moving to and fro as if on glass, being powered by both motors instead of just one. I have no idea what I did (aside from following instructions from support). Did the motor reset itself by being connected directly to the mother board? Who knows? Not me.
I even got my BitZero device to work for the first time. Unbelievable.
I’m tired now. Going out tomorrow to try for a third time. Fingers are crossed. Wish me luck.
I’m smiling guys! Third time was the charm. After getting all of the bugs out of the machine, I completed my first project: a shop sign. My wife says I was a bit too ambitious for my first project. She’s probably right, but that’s how I roll.
Thank you to everyone at Support who coached me through all of the newbie headaches and questions. You guys are awesome!. Also thank you to all of the forum members who contributed comments and advice. I think the Carbide community is great. I learned much and will carry it forward.
Anyway, onward and upward. Now that I know a bit more about what I’m doing, the sky is the limit. You guys are much appreciated.
If you do not reach for the stars or you wont catch them. There is a song on the radio that the lyrics are something like this:
You have to chase your dreams because the dreams wont chase you back.
There is no one that never fails but failure leads to success. Your sign is very nice. Please explain how you did it. Since you are the Woodknot carpenter are you a knot head?
Things are looking much better. But I want to be sure you are ‘all the way there’. Can you post a closeup of the “W” in woodknot and the “N” in carpenter, the font name used for each and the toolpath parameters (including the bit) you ultimately used to cut?
Cheers.
Your patience and perseverance paid off. That is a very nice project. A lot of folks underestimate the skills needed to delve into CAD/CAM and it can be very daunting. There are literally a lot of moving parts to master along with no small amount of computer expertise.
The main border on the outside edge was a pocket cut with a 1/4" flat end mill. I was warned not to attempt a slot with a contour tool path with this cutter. However, the border immediately surrounding the main art was a contour cut, done with a 90° V-bit no offset, .1" deep.
After placing the main text, I selected both lines of text and put an “offset” around both of them. The smaller text was placed inside of a rectangle with a radius at the corners. I then surrounded all of these elements with a rectangle, and used a Pocket cut with 1/4" end mill to create the pocket around those elements. I did not use “Rest Carving” as I do not have CC Pro, nor have I done it before.
The artwork on the left was cut from an imported black-and-white image which was traced into the work area. It was cut with a 90° V-bit to .18" deep, it was a V-carve cut.
I failed to realize that I could have done an Advanced V-Carve cut on the text and artwork. They probably would’ve come out even better.
The main text of “Woodknot Carpenter” was cut with a 90° V-bit; depth of cut was .085". I think I messed up there; it should have been a bit deeper.
The smaller text was cut with a 60° V-bit,.1" deep.
I might try the entire project one more time with some fine tuning, as this one was done on the back of one of my earlier failed attempts. Let me know if you have more questions.
The font was Copperplate. The cut was a V-carve of .1" deep. I think the cut was too shallow cause I did not get the nice straight edges of the font. I think I try this file one more time.
Yes I was limiting the depth of the V-carve, but I think if you go too shallow you don’t get the full weight and form of the font. It’s a balancing act between too deep and not deep enough.
You should never limit the depth on a simple vcarve. You get funky results. Always use advanced vcarve if you want to limit depth. You do not have to use a flat end mill to do clearing.
When you limit depth of a simple vcarve you get unexpected results. A simple vcarve goes down the middle of the line until both sides of the line are met with the vee bit. An advanced vcarve goes down each side of the line to the requested depth. If there is any flat areas you can add a flat end mill. If you add a flat end mill for clearing flat areas but the flat areas are not wide enough for the flat end mill that is ignored and only the vee bit will be requested. When doing a simple vcarve always use bottom of material or the “t”. Be sure to look at the preview because wide lines the bit will go as deep as required to touch both sides of the lines and thin material can cut through. The preview would show white if it is going to cut through.
Here is an example of what I am talking. The top text is a simple vcarve tool path with depth limited to .1". The lower text is advanced vcarve limited to .1 depth.
Look at the areas I circled and see the advanced vcarve cut the whole letter. The limited depth simple vcarve deformed the letters.
Here is an example of using the “t” (bottom of material) with 6" letters and a simple vcarve. See the white areas forming at the bottom center of most letters. I had the material thickness set at .2".
Yes. what Will says. Especially with text. David, I looked at the previous C2d file you posted and the W is about 1.62 inches wide. Based on this letter in Coppergate with a 90 degree bit, CC needs to cut 0.145 inches deep to accurately reproduce the font when this size. That is really not that deep ( 90 degree bit will tend to be shallow unless the text is huge). With a V carve toolpath, even if you tell it 1 inch maximum depth, CC will only cut as deep as necessary to reproduce the font. I think if your next test cut allows CC to v carve the text as deep as it wants (in this case 0.145 inches) , you will like what you see.
Never say never — you can get some cool effects with it — try combining a depth limited normal V carving w/ an Advanced V carving for a cool engraved effect (though maybe that isn’t enough to justify having this option?)
Since every v carve toolpath has a calculated maximum based on the bit/path combination, I would prefer a default depth of a v carve to be as deep as CC calculates it and it should trigger an alert if the CC calculated depth exceeds stock thickness. Something like, " The calculated V carve depth is XXX and exceeds the stock thickness of YYY. " A further message could alert users to either continue, use material which exceeds XXX in thickness, or reduce the max depth and sacrifice the V carve accuracy. The problem is in program flow. You are prompted for depth before the toolpath is determined but the toolpath must be determined before max depth can be calculated. Maybe you could use a checkbox “use calculated max depth y/n”… The alert would only show after the toolpath was calculated. In this scenario there would actually be no default, just an option to allow CC to determine max.
