I’m a weirdo and I know it’s a “sign of a well loved machine”, but I don’t want to damage stuff unnecessarily. I want to avoid damage to my MDF table top if I can on my Shapeoko 5 Pro on through cuts. I’ve got the work holding kit and what I have done so far is put my pieces on 1/4” plywood to be the backer but that kind of requires the same size plywood piece size. Any recommendations or working patterns to keep my waste board pretty?
I believe you want:
and to set your zero relative to two tape thicknesses on your MDF.
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In Carbide Create job setup you can use bottom of material instead of top of material. Then when you set up x y and Z zero you can still use the BitZero but that will set Z zero on top of your material . So after the X Y and Z you need to jog over to a clear spot on the spoilboard and use the BitZero sitting on the spoilboard and probe Z only.
The advantage of using bottom of material is the spoilboard will not be eaten through if you miscalculate the material thickness. You should always calculate the material thickness correctly but if you have thicker material than you told Carbide Create then the first cut will be a little deeper than expected. However after that everything will be cut to the proper depth of cut for the end mill. Alternatively if you have material that is shorter than you entered in Carbide Create the first cut could be an air cut. Both issues can be avoided if you measure accurately.
@WillAdams is suggesting the super glue and painters tape method. That method works very well but you need to measure your material plus the super glue and tape to avoid an onion skin on the bottom or cutting through to the spoilboard.
When I use super glue and painters tape I measure the material with my digital caliper sitting on the spoilboard and open Carbide Create and enter the material thickness in job setup, save the c2d file (v7) and then go back to Carbide Motion and load the new file to cut.
I replaced my spoilboard in October and it is still perfect by using the bottom of the material and not top.
The work flow is different so it takes some getting used to at first. Never use the jog rapid position to X and Y and then mindlessly do the Z+6mm position on top of the material or you will get a dent. You can rapid position to X and Y to verify but then you need to rapid position off the material to check the Z+6MM rapid position.
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When you use that method I assume you still set the start cut at 0 in CC? So there are really two 0’s when you think about it that way? Internally in CC it would consider 0 to be the top of the material based on the thickness right?
Carbide Create has two zero options:
- top (the usual one, and the one we recommend folks use unless there’s a reason not to)
- bottom
You can work with this either way.
If I have a file where I want the origin set relative to the baseplate, but want the file to have a top origin, I set the origin at the baseplate, then jog up by the stock thickness, then set the origin there — in theory this isn’t necessary if one has absolute precision and accuracy in the measurement of your stock thickness, for practice, YMMV.
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