I have a shapeoko3 XXL and since I bought it I have had an issue with square cuts. If you are looking at the machine it is moving to far to the right side of the cut. If cutting a square the left, bottom, and top are perfect but the right side of the square is always 3/16ths to 1/4 to far to the right. I just tried it again with a friend sending me the G code. The top, bottom, and left side are 3/4ths from the edge, the right side is 9/16ths, so 3/16ths to far to the right.
Anyone have any ideas or tips on what might be wrong?
Can you do something small like say a 1 in square and then something large say like a 5 or 10 in square? And then measure and see if the offset on the right is the same for both.
Have you checked step scaling on your x-axis? Essentially the controller needs to know how to convert a number of discrete steps on your stepper motor into distance.
Apart from that it probably is worth making sure everything is well tightened.
I had a friend create a 4.5 x 4.5 square and the result was the same as the 11x16 Juice grove. I can throw a piece of scrap in the machine real quick and try a 1x1 and let you know.
I do not know how to check step scaling honestly. I am still pretty new to the whole CNC world.
Machine is square, belts are tight and brand new also just replaced all the wheels and adjusted.
No problem. So you are saying that when you measure cut to cut line, on the front to back depth into the machine it matches exactly, but on the left to right it is too large? the scaling thing isn’t something I’ve had to adjust in my machine, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind given that you say your problem is independent of the two axes, meaning that you probably don’t have a simple issue like laying out your outlines wrong for an inside versus an outside cut etc. Off by quarter inch seems pretty large though.
So if cutting a juice grove on a cutting board and looking at the machine
You will have .75 of a boarder for 3 sides and then .5 of a boarder on the right side. So the X Axis is traveling 3/16 - 1/4 to far to the right where the tool path is actually supposed to be on only the right side of the board.
Thanks for the pictures, it’s helpful. The only thing I can think of, along the lines of what I was mentioning before, is to measure the actual cut dimension to see if it is scaled properly. You might need to do this on a dedicated job, just draw a square in carbide create, do an outside or inside perimeter (make sure you know which one you are doing) and then check it again.
Personally I would probably use center stock to avoid any edge Gap issues like this.
I have done that on multiple occassions on Cutting board juice grooves. It has gotten to the point that I make the boards 18.25 wide and make the stock size in Carbide or Vcarve 18 to make my tool pathing. Then trim the boards accordingly on the right side if need be. Thank you again for your advice
This is essentially the method I would use. Sorry I can’t come up with any better answers at this point, but worth trying out the measurements again and then see if anyone else has ideas after the holiday.
Before putting the board in the cnc I always check for square, corners to corners and all 4 sides. Then take my measurements and create the file Thank you again for your help and have a happy new year! I am going to check that full post out see if maybe theres something in there I am missing as well
Did you buy the XXL new or used ?
Might be worth checking the X axis scaling factor is not off.
In Carbide Motion, in the Settings menu, click the show Log button, then go to the “MDI” menu, type $$ and hit Send. Then locate the value of the $100 parameter in the Log window. It should be 40.000
Attached This is a GCode from a friend that made the cut in the picture above, we were testing to see if it might have been something weird with my computer and programming, but it did the same thing with his GCode as well
Yeah I see a simple square 4.5" x 4.5" offset 0.75" from the lower left corner.
I assume the piece of MDF shown in the pic is exactly 6"x6" ?
If so, that’s something at the machine and I’m interested to see what the $100 value is.
