You might need to tune up but my SO3 XXL cuts great. If you have a Makita/C3D router power off the machine and router. Put a bit in the router and then pull back and forth on the collet/bit. If you feel movement maybe your router bearings are bad. If you dont feel any give then it would not be the bearings. If it does move it is very obvious and either a rebuild is in order or a replacement. Unfortunately the bearings in Makita/C3d routers go bad and cause inaccurate cuts because the spindle is bouncing around.
To tune up start by checking all your v-wheels. With the power off try to turn the v-wheels and it should move the gantry. If just the wheel turns then adjust the bottom wheels. Insert an allen wrench in and slightly loosen the bolt. Then with a wrench slightly turn the eccentrics. Hold the wrench on the eccentric and tighten up the bolt. Check again. There is tight and then too tight. Also before adjusting take a stiff nylon brush and clean the v-wheels to get any buggers off. Sometimes the v on the X and Y rails get dirty and I use a white 3m finishing pad to clean them off. The 3m finishing pad is like those scrubby things on the back of dish washing sponges.
After you get your v-wheels adjusted check your belt tension. There is no objective way to tell you how to adjust the belts but have the gantry all the way to the back and on the Y rails put your finger under the center of the belt on both sides and see if they feel about the same tension. You should be able to get your finger under the center of the belt. The X belt move the router to one end and repeat like the Y belts and it should feel about the same tension.
Lastly do a calibration test which you can find here on the forum. Basically you cut a particular size circle and square and then measure the output to see if it meets the design in CC. If the belts and v-wheels are in good shape then you can adjust the steps per MM in gbrl. The default steps are pretty accurate but each machine is slightly different.
Have you lubricated your Z-Plus and/or HDZ. There is a maintenance guide to give guidance on lubricating the bearing blocks.
I do a maintenance almost everyday before I start cutting anything. I have the std. CC router and the Z plus carriage.
The V-wheels are all tuned and will move in the X and Y direction without to much pressure but they are original with the machine (now about 3 years old) so maybe they need replacedā¦though they look good.
Bearings seem ok. No movement front to back with a bit in the router. Does have some upward slack, but has had that since Iāve owned the machine so Iād be surprised if that were a problem
Belts tensioned to hum as per instructions from C3D.
Test cuts with squares and circles come out fine.
Have not lubricated the bearing blocks so I guess thatās all that is left to try.
I can cut a circle and an inlay circle without any problem and have them fit. The problem comes as soon as I try to cut anything with any real design in it. Just seems to turn to trash, with the pocket just cutting out too much material to have any kind of small detail left and the plug leaving to much material to make the design worthless.
Ugh.
Having to go back to contours and pockets to get jobs done at this stage.
If the v-wheels turned without moving the gantry then adjust the v-wheels. With the v-wheels not tight it will cause slop in the movement.
My SO3 from 2016 has the original v-wheels so unless they are deformed or have a nick they are still good.
After adjustment grab the gantry on both ends and lift up and it should not move up and down. Same for your Z axis. Pull up and down and adjust the wheels as necessary. Only the bottom two on each bracket are adjustable. The top ones are fixed.
I donāt have a SO3 and have no experience with v-wheels but Iād assume if all is good there should be little to no slack/movement so what @gdon_2003 is suggesting is probably your starting point. Circles and Squares maybe yielded acceptable results but the changes in direction are limited (square) or smooth (circle). Iād assume any inlay with many changes in direction would not result in a desirable outcome if there is slack in you machines movements.
As for how I cut out my inlays I use the Engrave toolpath in Fusion 360 which Iām assuming works like VCarve in Carbide Create and use a 60deg vbit (Amana RC-1148 is what Iām currently using) for general use but when I do an inlay with very fine detail Iāll likely experiment with even pointier vbits to avoid having inlay pocket that are too shallow. When there is fine detail in the carve often end up doing multiple stepdowns because Iāve had more problems with chipout (pieces tearing out) when going full depth at once (for text this applies more to the plug (male) then it actual carve (female). Now I know some methods leave a glue gap but for this inlay I didnāt, and simply followed the exact same contours as the initial carve. I also let the vbit go to a bottom depth of 2mm to 3mm deeper then the inlay contours. Once the toolpath with the vbit is done I then use flat endmills of varying sizes to clear our excess material remaining between the inlay contours to a bottom depth about .5mm to 1 mm higher then the bottom depth of the vbit. This way if any material wants to tearout it likely will not affect the male part of the inlay plug and stays contained to the grove left behind by the vbit in the first toolpath.
Now I am noticing the glue seam leaving a shadow effect around the letters in this latest inlay attempt but Iāll attribute that to my poor clamping method that I used this time around. Usually I remove the project from the CNC bed and sandwich the inlay/project between scrap boards and clamp down hard using many, many clamps (ideally Iād love to have a hydraulic press but space is at a premium).
I grabbed Titebond III Exterior glue one time on a test piece. That glue dried a brown color and did look like a shadow. Titebond Original Interior glue was essentially clear.
The better the fit of the inlay means that there is less of an exposed glue line to see. Your project is very ambitious in that it has all those letters. +1 for making it look so good.
Another thing I should have maybe done was not keep the inlay as a single piece and cut it between each grouping of text/paragraph and glue them one at a time using more clamps.
Canāt wait to get a finish on this and bring the grain and wood color to life.
I saw a similar box somewhere in the vast jungle of the internet and wanted to try and make my own. It was fun taking the stock right off the machine and being able to do the glue up without any serious work. Super happy with it, despite some chatter in the pockets, but I donāt know if itās entirely avoidable with a 1/16" bit in this material without doing a light perimeter pass at depth.
I have a short video that needs to be put together with the machining. HDM makes easy work out of large plate work and 3d surfaces.
@LiamN this is my current baby. Begode Extreme, 134 volts with 115mm suspension travel. I redesigned the linkage to make it rising rate with a much better rate curve than factory. Yes, Iāve taken it off some sweet jumps
The hex grid edges are .065 according to the calipers. The wood is Sapele, which is pretty stable. I remember it looked really thin and delicate when I was cutting it, but it worked out fine.
I like the thinner frame edges you got on yours better. It looks cleaner and more in line with the actual thickness. I think the wood I use is about .12 inches thick.
I wanted to make some Halloween tombstones for the yard. I bought some cheap $7 pieces of 2x2 foam at Loweās and some $8 cans of textured granite color spray paint.
The plan was to paint the foam and then put shelf liner on it , cut and then paint the cut portions in black.
I had no idea how this paint would do on the foam. Well, something in the propellant I guess did not play well with the structure of the foam. It caused the surface to deform in pockets such that there was no way the shelf liner would work so I just put it on the machine and cut away with my daughterās design.
In the end, the damage from the paint looks pretty cool. It looks more worn. Now we have to paint the cut portions by hand though. Several more of these to make.
BTW, it took 1 entire can of paint for 1 side of each piece of foam. I tried shellac on a spare piece and that didnāt mess up the surface, but like I said we like the texturing as is.
