Sorry for the confusing title, but basically what I’m trying to do is carve a design on the top of a lid that I’m making to fit over a base, fill that design with epoxy resin, and then flip the piece over and carve out the bottom so it will fit over the base.
The problem I’m having is that much of the time, when I flip the piece over, even though I try my hardest to make sure the design is perfectly centered in the middle of the piece, the zero will be off by just enough to make the bottom cutout align incorrectly with the top. So it ends up lopsided.
I got the bitzero and I use it, but I’m still having issues. Does anyone have a technique for doing this?
My technique is to cut the lid bottom first, then cut the bottom of the box, then iterate on contours for the bottom until the lid just fits, then put it in place on the box, then clamp it in place, then cut the design for the lid.
Agree. Sometimes i need to cut a “fake bottom” out of scrap to hold the lid. Using the x/y of the bottom to cut the lid. Z height can be off the top or use the lid stock height added to the base lip height that the top fits onto.
I did exactly this to make some two sided signs this weekend. I began by cutting the holder from some scrap wood. I noted the MACHINE X and Y and left the jig in place. I then cut side 1 elsewhere on the machine, changing X, Y and Z zero in the process. I then reset the MACHINE X and Y to the original values, and zeroed X and Y. Z zero was also changed once the piece was clamped.
One issue I found was that in order to get back to the desired absolute X and Y could take some screwing around if you ever used rapid jog mode. The increments in the jog menu are all regular numbers (1, 0.25 and 0.025 mm) so if your position is X=-123.456 and you want to set it to X=-123.466, you have to do random rapids in the X dimension until you get to something that ends in .466 or .491 or .516 or whatever. I’d love a feature which allows you to enter a custom increment less than, say 0.100 mm and jog that amount.