Wondering if anyone can help me learn why I continue to get small amounts of material left behind in the bottom of my advance v carve pockets? Is this a design flaw? An uneven spoilboard? Tramming issue? 
It’s not the end of the world, but I sure would like to reduce some of the sanding I’m left with!
TIA!
What is the Max Depth? What is the Depth per Pass? How do they interact?
For example, say the Max Depth is 0.5" and the Depth per Pass is 0.125" resulting in 4 full depth passes, if you reduce the Depth per Pass to 0.124 you will instead have 5 passes, where the last pass removes only 0.004"
How rigid is your material, and how is it held down? Thinner material can flex / vibrate, and this can cause differences in the cut depth.
What Z do you have? Is there any vertical play in the Z Axis?
This was 1" edge glued poplar. So very little movement and held down with clamps.
I’m not sure what you mean by vertical play in the z axis??
Max depth is .25 in with a depth per pass (for 1/4" endmill) of .04
I can understand the areas that were too narrow for the 1/4" endmill as the v-bit would be too wide to clean it out entirely. The small amounts left in the larger gaps has me scratching my head though.
0.25" / 0.04" == 6.25
so six full depth passes are made:
6 * 0.04" == 0.24"
and the seventh pass removes 0.01"
If we change this to 0.035" we get 7 passes which remove 0.245" and the 8th and final pass will remove just 0.005" of material.
It looks to me like the clearing bit was too large to complete the path around the letters. If that was a 201 end mill, and the letters were calculated with a taper from a 90 or 60 deg vbit, then at the bottom of the groove, there was not enough space to run the 1/4" endmill in certain spots. Try raising your final depth or use a smaller endmill and see if it still does it.
With the machine on, but the spindle OFF, grab the nose of the spindle and try to move it up-and-down. Don’t use so much force that you force the stepper motor to turn.
If you have a dial indicator, there are more precise ways to determine this as well.
Update- I had to start a new project and didn’t experience any of the same problems. So it seems like it was definitely some flexing in the material or a design error and not any machine settings or components.
Thank you all for your suggestions! I’m thinking I will just add a finish pass with a smaller diameter endmill next time to see if that cleans it up!
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