Trouble with Tutorial Two

Just started using my new Nomad, couldn’t be any more excited. Totally new to CNC.

Did the wrench turorial, it came out pretty well, though it failed to cut completely through the bottom layer of metallic tape on the material. I assume this was due to improper Z axis zeroing, hopefully I’ll get better as I go along.

Tutorial two was much less successful. I followed the instructions carefully, and things seemed fine, but about 1/3 of the way through the machine made some squealing noises and began to eat the existing work. I’ve attached a photo.

Anyone know why this happened?
Thanks!

That could have been the collet hitting the part that doesn’t get cut out (the elevated part on the right side in your picture above). It did that for me too, check how deep the end-mill was inside the collet. If its the length of the end-mill is not sticking out far enough, the collet will hit. I don’t think Meshcam takes that into account (if it does and somebody knows, please correct me).

So what i usually do is, if the depth on the Z axis is .5 inch, i make sure that the end-mill ‘sticks out’ at least .5 inches as well to avoid the collet hitting the wood.

I think Oliver is right - your collet probably hit the side of the material on the right and it threw off the settings.

Do the same cut again but place the material vertically. You won’t have the same problem

Thanks Oliver and Darren, I’ll try again with your suggestions and see if I don’t get better results.

Hi MrHume, and welcome to the world of CNC!

Also, you might want to check to make sure that the feed-rates aren’t too fast and causing the machine to “skip steps” at some point in the job where it might be overloading the stepper motors.

If you don’t mind posting the tool-path dialog settings you ended up with, I’d be curious what they were based on what you put in and how your material was defined. It’s possible if you put the material as something other than Renshape you could have gotten surprises from that.