I’ve had my machine set up for a little bit and have completed my first cuts successfully. I am wanting to surface my wasteboard now and have been following the steps outlined in a video from C3D’s youtube channel (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfeobN-ncwo).
When I have a v bit installed, I am not able to get the tip of the bit to meet the front edge / corners of the wasteboard. I can get exactly over the back left and right corners, but I’m not able to do the same for the front corners. The Y- travel stops roughly 0.5 in (12.7mm) from the edge, so I can’t get the tip of the v where it needs to be per the video’s instructions.
Looking at the Y axis ballscrews, it looks to me like there should be plenty of travel left for the carriages to move forward. There’s over 0.75in (19.05mm) of visible screw left and the carriages don’t seem to be at any sort of a hard-stop, but I can’t get the machine to move any further forward. When I move the carriages as far to the back of the machine as they will go, they visibly meet the end of each screw and the carriages are right up against the back limit switches.
Does anyone know what may be causing my machine to stop before the end of my front Y axis?
I just surfaced mine, twice, and can confirm that the Y does not travel to the forward edge of the waste board. I use a 1" surfacing bit, so the size of the bit makes up the difference.
If there is nothing mechanical stopping the gantry movement, then it’s the controller limiting the movement to the defined max distance in the firmware settings or Carbide Motion. You can edit those, but that is ‘at your own risk’ modification.
Jog to the corner. Power off your machine and manually see if the machine has more room to move. When doing a configuration a file is set and that limits jogging. However the machine can move slightly more in all directions as a safety precaution. If your machine can manually be moved further then you can edit your Shapeoko.json file. that file is located by opening Cc and then About menu. Then Open Data directory. In the Carbide Motion v6 folder is the Shapeoko.json file. You can edit that file to get more movement. Just be careful because you dont want to hit the mechanical stops and cause missed steps.
Not sure if C3D still does this but back in the day they limited X movement to account for the Suckit dust collection. The ears of the Suckit stuck out past the edge of the Z axis so to prevent the Shapeoko from slamming into the side rails they limited motion. When jogging you are limited by the Shapeoko.json file. However when running gcode the machine will try to move where commanded and would run into the mechanical stops. That causes loss of steps and can ruin your project so just take it easy and adjust a little at a time. If you edit the Shapeoko.json file copy it first and rename so you can revert back if necessary. The Shapeoko.json file can be edited in any text editor. Just be sure to save as text and not someother file type. Notepad on Windows works.
Here is the Shapeoko.json for my SO3. Your travel will be different. TravelX, TravelY and TravelZ are the ones to change. Then save to the original location. Start or restart CM to try. If CM is already started the changes will not take effect. You must restart CM. I suspect that file is read when opening CM.
The machine travel is listed at: 48.7 in(X) x 24.53 in(Y)
Furthermore, we can see the specifications for the MDF slats, found here:
So if the slats are 25" in length, and machine travel is 24.53" in length, it makes sense that the spindle can’t cover the entire wasteboard if you are using a “V” bit.
I think that’s why people use a larger surfacing bit, like the “McFly” bit found here:
FWIW, there is a 4x2 flattening file found on cutrocket: