New user, Made my first cut

[tjwaggoner]

Got my machine put together yesterday, made my first cut today. No crashes. Looking forward to this machine.

[Zman (MICHAEL ZEMANEK)]

Welcome to the club.

Glad for ya.

Make chips not dust…

[gdon_2003 (Guy Donham)]

There are always problems on your shakedown cruise. Most of the problems are user experience. The new machines have had some connection problems but C3D is pretty responsive and hopefully have corrected their wiring issues during manufacture.

Welcome to the vortex that sucks you in to an alternate universe. I started 5 years ago and am a traditional woodworker. For the first two years the Shapeoko took over. I am back on an even keel with my hybrid approach to woodworking. Many people when they get a Shapeoko try to do everything with it. That is great for learning but some things are better done the traditional way. So keep an open mind and do what is easiest and fastest. When a carpenter only has one tool, a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[tjwaggoner]

So far everything going well. Only thing off is on the cut out contour path, one part didn’t quite cut through. Left a section still connected but it was so thin you could see through it. Like tissue paper thin if even that. Got to be slightly out of flat bed right? I found some bolts in my mdf slats were inconsistently tight so hope that corrected it.

[RegulatorsMountup (J)]

Hey buddy I’m right there with you. Welcome. Looks good.

[Julien]

@tjwaggoner

Got to be slightly out of flat bed right? I found some bolts in my mdf slats were inconsistently tight so hope that corrected it.

Also, to get a perfectly flat bed that is aligned with mechanical axes, you need to surface your slats (i.e. use the machine to do a very shallow pocket over the whole work area to shave off high spots)

There is a nice thread where @SLCJedi mentioned how he did this on his Pro:

Getting the Pro Setup

A friend got the wife and I a much needed weekend at a hotel, so I didn’t get to making progress on getting my Pro fully ready for service until this afternoon. I got the M6 threaded inserts in the Hybrid Bed, making it a double Hybrid Bed. I like options and using M6 inserts means they match the thread pitch of the workholding kit that came with the machine. They go in from the bottom and sit below where the bolt heads and extrusions sit, so they don’t get hit during surfacing. I also got a su…

[tjwaggoner]

Will the machine cut the whole surface of the slats? Or would that leave a raised lip around the boundary?

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Depends on the machine — the SO5 Pro can cut the entire surface of the slats (so long as the gantry isn’t shifted forward), but other machines such as the Pro @Julien linked cannot.

[Julien]

and on other machines than the SO5 Pro, it’s just a matter of swapping slats a couple of times to surface them all and not have a raised lip

[HaroldO (Harold Osmer)]

Nice first cut. Make a lot of simple designs and get to know what the tool can do, how it sounds, and what bit works in a given situation (detail, etc.).

[StephenCox]

We all cut one or two of these.

[tjwaggoner]

Yeah wasn’t anything meaningful, just wanted to cut something that had a bit change involved to go through the process.