Why did the spindle decide to dive down into my bed and rails?

[ccrowder (Chris Crowder)]

Trying to find out what happened… Still fairly new to my machine but have done a few small projects… trying to find out why the z-axis on my machine decided to just dive down hard into my bed and ruin my rails… Attaching the cut file and photos of what happened as well as the part itself… The run was zeroed to the wasteboard for the cutout…

LukeSign-CutoutBottomZref.c2d (232 KB)

[Zman (MICHAEL ZEMANEK)]

When this happened to me it was EMI. This is what I did to help solve my issues.

Grounding your Shapeoko - CNC Machines / Shapeoko - Carbide 3D Community Site

[flynnjs (Jason)]

Looks like it is gradually getting deeper which suggest the collet wasn’t tight enough and the cutter got pulled down.

[ccrowder (Chris Crowder)]

This was with a down cut bit… since it is forcing the chips down wouldn’t it be trying to force the bit up if it was loose?

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Were you cutting a slot just as narrow as the tool? Was the slot deeper than the diameter of the tool?

where possible avoid slotting and add geometry and cut as a pocket

Making vacuum hose adapters

While cutting up vacuum extension wands for this is expedient, it’s a bit problematic given that Shop Vac recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought at the last minute, and production hasn’t caught up. I need a receptacle for the Sweepy 2.0 dust fitting — one option would be to purchase one from Woodcraft, but Carbide 3D sells blocks of HDPE: which looks to be just barely big enough for things to fit. Measuring the hose fitting I get a diameter of ~63.5mm — offsetting that twice we arrive at…

and/or

Adding geometry to cut as a pocket with a finishing pass

One technique which is often suggested to avoid slotting is to add geometry around a part which one wishes to cut out and cut as a pocket down to tab depth — here’s one technique for that. In this case, the project is a bevel gauge which will be cut out of 0.0625" (~1.5mm) thick aluminum: [bevelgauge] Due to the narrowness of the angles, an 0.03125" endmill has to be used, so after importing and scaling the file (we will be cutting out one which is 3") we select the perimeter and offset it tw…

and consider leaving a roughing clearance and taking a finishing pass.

[Griff (Well crap, my hypometric precursor device is blown…)]

@flynnjs is correct, collet not tight enough. I’ve more experience with that particular problem then I’d care to admit.

[CullenS (Cullen Simpson)]

Happened to me yesterday but I was able to recover ok.

I wish there was a way to remeasure the but during a pause from a job even if I had to manually return the router to the exact XY.

[Freedom (Paul A McGuinness)]

Mine did a similar Deep Dive and broke all of the wheels on the Z-Axis Carriage. Not good. I’m still learning but not to happy. It’s the third major issue, so far.