Okay time to get started on serious Shapeoko learning n making

Okay I make benches, yard swings and porch gliders among other outdoor furniture. I want to start using my xxl to engrave sayings on the furniture. Such as have a sit. Made for whomever, anything really. So what I have would be a 1x4x5 which I would want to do the engraving in the middle of the board. How would I get the xxl to start the engraving around the middle of the board. I know before I even start cc is going to say it’s to big for the machine. Can’t prob it since I’m starting in the middle. So what do I need to do?

so you can overhang the wood over both front and back edge. that part is not too insane. Just make sure you clamp it down well in that configuration

from a design point of view, in carbide create, set up the “stock” page (the sprocket) to have the zero at the “center” position instead of lower left…
… and then when you zero the machine, pick the middle (in both X and Y direction) of where you want the engraving to be… well that’s about it really

In the design you will see a red dot in the middle of the design area, and that is what matches the zero you set in the middle of your beam when you zero the machine.

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oh and obviously you need your text/etc rotated 90 degrees since you’ll have the wood stick out front/back, so the wood is also rotated 90 degrees,

as for the size of the work area in CC, just set it to the size of what you want to engrave, the size of the actual wood does not matter really

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As @fenrus mentioned you can produce something of small dimension, rotate it 90 deg and put it in the middle of the board. You can put the origin as the middle of the design and place the board to be where you want the middle of the design to be. It will be easier than to measure the offset if you use the bottom left.

The difficulty will be to support a longboard so you have a more or less perfectly flat surface because it will impact the carving with one side having deeper carving than the other for example. You will also need to add support on the outside because relying on the Shapeoko frame to keep the board steady could possibly bend the frame or tip the Shapeoko if it is not secured to a sturdy surface.

Finally, the stock Shapeoko has about 3in Z travel and you have to account for the length of the endmill so don’t think of engraving a 4X4, probably a piece of 2 by will be the most you can do.

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That you guys once again the cnc family comes through

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