Hey everyone, newbie question. If I plan to tile a full 4x8 sheet of plywood using pins located at (x1,y0.5) and (x1,y48.5) with the second pin being in the overlap location do I need to run a separate gcode before starting my actual project? I’m not finding a way to set up a toolpath outside of the tiling subsets and if Im understanding correctly when the second tile is run, it would just drill out my already established pin
basically, am I correct in thinking I would need to manually
run toolpath for pin locations
run 1st tiling toolpaths
slide and install pins
run second toolpaths
Hope that makes sense. Again, Im very very new to this and tiling is one of the main reasons I decided to give it a try, so hoping I can create a seamless process for easy replication. TIA!!
Or don’t use pins, just mark the start of the next tile on your workpiece and mark a line on the machine where you zero the first tile. Then slide the stock until the line on the material matches the line on the edge to start the second tile.
In this image you can see the line on the material. You can’t see it but on the edge of that piece of walnut there is a mark to indicate zero from the first tile.
Do you have pretty good accuracy with that method? Sure seems easier, but judging from the tiling demo they put out it looked like it was harder to get it lined up? Hence my exploration into pins.
I suppose I should just bite the bullet and run the dang thing lol
I have done 3 jobs that way and have not had an issue. Set your overlap to .25” or .5” and you probably won’t notice unless your part has a very fine level of detail.
I did put that piece of walnut down and then ran a cutter along the edge to make sure it was parallel to the Y axis. One thing I should have done was imbed some threaded inserts into the walnut so that I could clamp down on the piece. Large sheets are hard to hold flat. Also keep in mind with a fence like that you may not be able to use the BitZero. A thinner (less Z) fence would have been better for that but maybe more flexy.
