I’ve tried the soft-limits enabled - it was really annoying. I would get setup to do a job, try & run it, get an error in CM & then wonder what I was doing wrong. Then much later, realize that I had soft-limits enabled & the software was erroring out due to an out-of-bounds check on the g-code - but the error message did not outright lead to me to think it was because of the soft-limits enabled. So went back & turned off the soft-limits. Much happier! Even if I do ram the extents of the machine from time to time, I learn from that much quicker!
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Is there some where I can make suggestions?
I didn’t know I could reposition the router! Thank you for that. I’ll try that!
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The folks who work on Carbide Create follow all the discussions here quite closely — I’d consider your suggestion has having been made.
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Darn. I would have liked to phrase it in a kinder and more productive tone than my heart-sore rambles above.
Sorry if I caused any offence. The software is generally really awesome. It’s really just this z axis stuff that’s thrown me since I got the machine.
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No offense meant, none taken.
It’s upsetting to us as well when a customer’s project doesn’t work out right. Hopefully all of the constructive advice above will help.
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We’ve all been new at one point. 
We’ve all been frustrated more than once. In my case… usually my fault.
If you reposition the router in the mount, treat it as a bit change and make sure you hit the “Load New Tool” in the screen.
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Thing is, I’m not super new.
I used to run the largest 3D printing community on earth and a semi successful YouTube channel. I designed taught CNC inductions and workshops at a state-funded makerspace. And I work for a company making software for laser cutters.
I just didn’t notice that it was grinding half a mm or so with each retraction/z-hop…
Which seems like a super easy mistake to make? Given that the end stop doesn’t trigger the job to pause. And you have extraction and earmuffs and such on.
And given the machine will run any old code even though it would send the machine outside the build area…
Like sure you could say it’s human error. I guess technically it is. But it also seems like something a computer could help to avoid. Cause humans are going to always make “mistakes” like this
As these machines do not have positional feedback of the motion system, this type of error is a given. The controller simply cannot know that a positional error has occurred. It just does the math & assumes the steppers are moving along with it. This works fine for plenty of CNC systems & reduces the system cost/complexity with the tradeoff.
But this is the main reason why using conservative feeds & speeds is necessary with the operator providing the overwatch.
But, Carbide Motion could tell if this was happening, and it doesn’t.
CM knows where the Zero is (in machine co-ordinates), and what type of machine it is, so it knows how big the movement envelope is. It would be trivial to run through the GCode and, (based on the current Zero), warn the user that out-of-bounds movement is likely.
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Thank you! That’s what I was meaning (and clearly not explaining well, myself).
I was running it slow. As I’ve previously said, it’s a very hard hardwood (more than 2.5x harder than white oak or hard maple).
But the issue was that it was moving at travel speed (fast). Because, again, the issue is that it cut my wood during a travel move.
As far as I know I can’t actually control travel speed in carbide create. But if you can tell me how, great.
That said, it seems to like to finish the shape before stopping so I don’t see how that would have prevented this issue. This is another big issue imo, from a safety perspective. I had to turn the machine off to stop it drilling the hole.
I also was watching it. I always do. You can see in the image (and I have said in this thread already) that I stopped the job when I saw this issue.
Sure, that’s the soft-limits - which do work. But I found those to be super annoying as it does not give you any info as to how much out of bounds the loaded job may go or on which axis, nor was the error clear that it was caused by the soft-limits. Believe me, I thoroughly frustrated myself getting an error code for which I didn’t know what/why the problem occurred - and I think I had forgotten at the time that I had enabled soft-limits.
And the soft-limits provide no protection/solution for lost steps. If a stepper can’t move when signaled(or the gears in the belts manage to slip by the belt teeth), the controller has no way to tell that there is a discrepancy between the calculated position of the toolhead & the actual position of the toolhead - & happily keeps running the job as if there is never any lost steps. Lost steps is a common culprit of a lot Z-axis snaffus - CNC end mills are simply not designed to drill down very well & earlier versions of CC could not ramp the toolpaths(I was very happy when the ramping capability was added).
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The soft limits don’t seem to work for me, I’ve had the machine move outside the bounds of the Z axis multiple times.
Is this the thing that the carbide rep above said I can’t enable if I want support?
Because I would much much much much much prefer a confusing error code (which I can learn) over spoiled work.
I don’t believe I’ve lost steps in the traditional sense (e.g a slipped belt), I’m now quite sure the steps were lost because the machine ground the Z axis into the hard end stop. This would have been avoided by the job stopping if the limit switch was triggered or if carbide motion made a calculation to see if any of the coordinates are outside the build volume of the machine (given the known start position for the job) and warned me before starting the job.
The controller can’t tell if steps are lost, but it doesn’t need to in order to avoid errors like this, the two above options don’t require the controller knowing it has lost steps, and these are basic/expected features in other common CNC machines (3d printers, lasers) even if what you are saying is true, and it’s not common in routers.
Humans are going to keep being human.
It’s bloody hard for me to tell a job is going to travel outside the build volume, given how obfuscated the whole thing becomes by using arbitrary start positions for every job. I thought I was safe given my material is 40mm, my bit was 32, and my z hop 3 (75mm all up). My z axis limit is 76mm. Clearly I somehow didn’t have enough room. Perhaps my waste board is a bit higher than carbide motion expects (though it is the stock t slot board and I have already resurfaced it a couple of times and removed a few mm). Or perhaps the bit didn’t seat as deep as the manufacturer designed. Who knows, but there was something that sent me over the limit.
But I currently have no way of knowing that’s going to happen until my job is ruined. Every bit of info I had available to me checked out.
You keep talking to me like I’m a noob, explaining things to me that I’ve already demonstrated in this thread that I understand.
I don’t think it’s fair to keep implying I should have have known better when I did, genuinely, do my due diligence as a user.
Computers are great at calculations. I reckon it would be wonderful to use them as calculators, to avoid these simple/common issues and make this process a bit more human-friendly. I would love love love to be warned that my job will run outside the axis limits before starting my job in future versions of carbide motion.
I was running it slow. As I’ve previously said, it’s a very hard hardwood (more than 2.5x harder than white oak or hard maple).
So, are we talking about lignum vitae? Rare, and virtually irreplaceable if you manage to even have some in stock.
I feel your pain. I’d have the same frustration if I was milling some chestnut boards that were reclaimed from my great-grandfather’s homestead. There would be no way to recover from such a mistake.
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Nah, Ironbark (tandor in Gubbi Gubbi). This was a roof rafter before I spent all that time planing, sanding and oiling it.
It isn’t super rare (though I wouldn’t buy it new), I had just fallen in love with it as I worked.
I’m currently working on an inlay to cover the gouge and it that’s coming along well. As long as I don’t mess it up again it should come out pretty.
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I had the same issue. It was a lack of lubrication on my z-axis mechanism. I ruined a few pieces. Now I keep her lubed up and have had no issues.
Basically if you are under lubed, at a random point in your job, it will try to move the z axis by a certain amount but hang up slightly and move it by a lesser amount which throws off the z-axis calibration for the rest of the run.
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@BillieRuben - based one what you described and the unfortunate results this looks a lot like what would happen to me when the Z-axis would skip steps on extremely hard material. One odd thing, in my experience when this does happen it usually falsely moves higher rather than lower. But my $ is that it’s a z-axis issue. I “solved” that by upgrading to the Z Plus and it hasn’t happened since. It used to happen with some regularity on the belt driven Z even on relatively soft but dense hardwoods. YMMV, good luck finding the root cause and a solution.
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didnt happen on my Nomad, rather on one of my 3D printers recently, but soft limits screwed up a long print i was running the other day 10+ hours into it. needless to say i was quite…irked.
Given that each hole is progressively deeper (when they should all be the same) I’m quite confident it was grinding against the hard z axis end stop with each hop.
Thanks everyone for the other ideas, but I’m quite sure this was it. It fits all the evidence to a T.