What is shallowest depth I can set on my Shapeoko pro? I am trying to scratch the surface of wood but not doing engraving.
I think it is .0001 but it is still cutting down to far…
Thanks for any help
Which Z-axis do you have?
For a belt-drive, 1/40th of a mm, for a Z-Plus, 1/200th.
Z plus maybe, it’s a screw type
The shallowest you can set is likely smaller than the backlash on the screw.
smallest step is .005 mm. My machine has .1mm backlash.
Thank you but I’m sorry to say I’m not sure what you are talking about backlash of the screw…
Just not that knowledgeable with this
Is there a way to trick it… my media is 1.35” thick, using a 1/32 bit… just want to slightly scratch the surface, can I set the x axis higher that top of medi and come up with it? Hope that made sense…
With a lead screw (as found on the Z plus) there is almost always a little bit of ‘play’ where the screw goes into the nut. An extreme version is just the looseness you find on a common nut and bolt.
The machine has a mechanism to minimize this play, but you can still have a bit of play in the screw. What usually happens is that when you reverse direction, the first little bit of travel is spent on taking up this play, instead of actually moving something. This little bit “I told it to move but it didn’t” is the backlash.
On my machine, aftter reversing directions, I can tell the Z carriage to move .1mm, and nothing happens. If I travel a further .1mm, I can see it move.
So you can see on my machine, moving .002 mm might do something (if you are travelling in the same direction), or may do nothing at all (if you reverse direction).
One of the reasons for a ballscrew mechanism (as found on the HDZ) is exactly to reduce this kind of backlash.
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