I have a question and yeah, probably a dumb question, but I was curious if anybody has tried to cut material (wood) while using the jog function?
I have a tray that has been pocketed out with a chamfered inside edge. Now in the flat section of the pocket I’m going to advanced Vcarve some lettering And then do an epoxy fill.
I was curious about using the jog function to do a surfacing of the epoxy.
I’m just nervous, this is a one shot deal and I don’t want to mess it up. ( My track record hasn’t been so good lately)
I have done it with portions of surfacing the spoil board, but not on a real project. I thought about it this weekend but get the fast jog was too fast for my case and the left level down would be too jerky.
I have done epoxy coasters and just do a pocket toolpath to flatten back to my base level.
I use jog to surface the tops of jobs with no obstructions (clamps, etc…).
I used it in the past to square up aluminum jobs, but now the Fast jog moves too fast, and it stalls the spindle after every cut.
This is something I like to do often, so I will be switching to another Gsender soon.
I’m not so concerned about fast, I’m more concerned about accuracy. My design is close to the chamfer and I don’t want the surfacing bit to get into that and mess it up.
I know I could set up a surfacing program and just allow the bit to do its job which would be quickest. I know the machine is only going to do what I program it to do, but I’ve ruined a couple of projects in the last weeks and don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability.
Is there space on your stock outside of the cut area? If so you could create a toolpath to test surface in that spot. Then have a toolpath to do the real surfacing but have the RPM to something slightly different like 18005 instead of 18000. If you have the router instead of spindle then CM will pause and ask you to adjust the RPM. You can then see if the depth looks right and if not just stop otherwise let it roll.
Do you mean a chamfer on the inside (concave) corner? That could be problematic if any epoxy soaks into the surface of the pocket, as you will need to remove a bit more material to get back to clean woodgrain. Wouldn’t that leave a step next to the chamfer?
You could MDI the outer edges to use precise coordinates, then jog the middle where it doesn’t need to be as precise.
A toolpath, I think is the better option in this case. Just double / triple check your Z before running the program. Let’s say your pocket is 0.25 deep. Program the pocket at 0.25 max depth, but set the top surface of your job to -0.25 to do a test run. It should cut above the pocket, even with the top surface.
Now touch off the bottom of the pocket, where there is no epoxy, and set it to -0.25 and run the program. Make small adjustments (0.005") if you need subsequent passes to fully clean up the epoxy.
The other option would be to cut a regular pocket with vertical edges, then do your v-carve & epoxy, then finish the pocket bottom, edges & chamfer last.
Yes, I have surfaced using the jog function before only because I didn’t allow a big enough cut area in my design. Just disconnect your bitsetter and set the z-axis height to the top of your material. Move the bit off your piece, turn it on and start jogging until flat. Drawing an oversize rectangle and completing a pocket toolpath with a .001 pass is easy as well if you want to run it in CC. Either way you will have to disconnect the bitsetter.
I think manually jogging and surfacing is a disaster waiting to happen. Why not just make a tool path to surface your little bit and use the center of that area. The jogging function is easy to control for just moving but trying to control it for a fine control with either over shoot or be so slow with a small increment it will be excruciating to use and likely burn your project epoxy.
Many surfacing bits have a central area that is not at the same depth as the cutting edges. If the BitSetter fits into that central area, then you get an incorrect value for the length of the tool.
Reminder that if you uncheck the BitSetter you need to power cycle, reconnect and reinitialize. Some say you just need to disconnect and reinitialize but I have found that that does not work for me. I am not sure the reasons behind it but when you uncheck the BitSetter it messes with the internal coordinates.
Edit: As per Josh (Technical Support C3D) never mind about the SO5. However for all SO3, SO4 you need to power cycle or you get strange results. The SO5 has a different controller. Not sure about HDM. The Nomad does not apply because you cannot turn the builtin BitSetter off.
Double check that it won’t be in the way of the bit in its flattening path. Keep in mind the diameter of that bit.
I have a Pro XXL and did not remove it but did disable the Bitsetter in CM and used paper to set Z Zero. I agree with @gdon_2003 on a power cycle after disabling the BitSetter. I repeated a scenario 3 times a week ago to verify and ifnI didn’t powercycle the machine got confused on Z location even though I did re-initialize.
Yes, I’ve used the Jog function to “erase” text on antique telephone book advertisment printer’s plates made of a layer of copper mounted on wood. After carefully jogging a 1/8th inch end mill to remove the advertisement text, only the image for the business ad remains. I’ve used the modified plates for letterpress printing the remaining image, followed by set text of my choice. Not difficult. In this way I’ve created a variety interesting cards, some suitable for general use, some for those not faint of heart…
