Need help asap materiel shifted

Just had material shift and move from clamps
Nice piece of wood and I don’t want to have firewood

How do I start I’ve and re adjust and have rock solid clamps?
So it does not move and cause errors?

On the top clamps (rightmost in the picture above), move the bolt as close as possible to the stock. Right now almost all the force of the bolt is going to the near end of the clamp. If possible raise the end that is away from the stock so the clamp is close to level.

If your cutting paths allow it, more top clamps. Side clamp are good if you need clear access to the entire top surface, but top clamping is more secure.

I’ve become a huge fan of double stick tape. Belt and suspenders with clamps as the workpiece allows, but mostly I rely on the tape, which hasn’t failed yet. A few cents worth of tape to help insure that a $20-30 piece of wood doesn’t move on me seems like cheap insurance.

Also to help with repositioning pieces for the multi-step inlays I’ve been doing I screwed a big plywood scrap to the deck, cut a large square with the CNC to give me a L shaped fence square to the machine to register and support two sides of my piece, allowing near perfect repositioning and creating two directions the workpiece can’t move.

For clamping correctly see:

If you have a corner zero position to go back to, and the part was clamped square, it might be possible get back to where things were, but any error will increase over the distance of the angle from corner-to-corner and be magnified thereby.

Does anyone know where you can buy step blocks like the white one at the bottom right of Jon’s pic? I’ve seen them in a number of vids and pics but can’t find them anywhere online.

We have them in our 3D Print library:

Or, they are easily made of any suitable material.

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You could fashion one out of a piece of scrap wood of the needed thickness with a hole drilled in it. Just get the clamp near hotizontal and put the clamp’s screw close to your material. It looks that’s where the OP went wrong. But also, on a panel like that, double-sided tape (or painters tape and CA glue) toward the center would be my preference.

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Crazy thought… you have a CNC, make them! Or if you have a bandsaw it’s much quicker. They don’t have to be pretty. You could even make them on a table saw.

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Double sided tape is my go to these days… So much faster and works great.

Yes… I’m drawing up the design today. :slight_smile:

If you didn’t have this piece of wood squared up on your machine, then there is a good chance that you will not be able to line it all back up properly in order to rerun the program. The slightest off line can become exaggerated later across the whole of the board.

Not squaring the material, or putting in reference tabs on any given part/project, could result in issues like this where if the part moves, then referencing back to location will be impossible.

One possibility for you to be able to relocate this piece to run again would be that your side locator locks, if not moved, then you will only have to relocate for one axis. That would make it a little easier to relocate. You then could send the spindle to X and Y zero, bring down the tool until it is just above the material. Then measure, with calipers if you have them, to the edge of the material and outside of the tool. If the tool is a 1/4" endmill, then move the material 1/8" over until under the endmill exactly that 1/8", that is only if the spindle is zeroed to the clean edges of the material. If you just referenced your X and Y zeroes, then there is not likely a chance to relocate it. This piece would have to go to another project with smaller sections to use the uncut portion.

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