More z axis issues

My jobs have been very reliable lately, although been working in 1/4" stock with 1/8" endill mostly. Was trying a new project today, had to restart the job a couple of times because of mistakes I made. Each of the two times I jogged to my old x/y then z+6, the depth had changed and I had to rezero z. Not slightly either, like 1mm or more. Any thoughts why? Z belt is tight. Thanks.

Have you checked the Z axis stepper pulley? Set screws tight, set screw on the stepper motor flats? Another thought is if you’re using a dust shoes that moves with Z, I had problems where the brush would foul the Z axis and make the belt skip even though every thing was tight. Third thing is too fast on plunge cut, if you plunge faster than the bit can cut something has got to give somewhere.

Dan

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Thanks for the reply Dan. You may be on to something here. I think one of them is missing. Is the smallest allen wrench supposed to fit? It seems to be slipping when I’m tighten or loosen the existing one. Thanks!

Addendum: Never mind. The second one was deeper. I found a bit in a precision screw driver set that fit a little better. Tightened both, hope this helps? I am using a suckit but running it pretty high, my clamps aren’t exactly low profile right now. One step at a time…

Kris

I got rid of those pesky little set (grub) screws and replaced them with:

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Suckit shouldn’t cause this problem as it’s at a fixed height. I actually switched from a boot that moved with Z to the Suckit for this reason and haven’t had this issue since.

Dan

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Glad to hear it Dan. I won’t sweat the boot. Rich, I’m heading down that path for sure. Ran a tester today, no Z issues at least for the time being. Hope that tightening the grub screws helped until I can replace. As always, thanks to the collective for your wisdom.

Kris

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