Z-Axis Stops Short; Too high to Cut Anything

Hi, I think I’m having an issue with my Z axis. It doesn’t seem to want to go all the way down on the axis. It’s peak is obviously the 9 level on the Suckit sticker. Presumably it can go all the way down to 0 but mine stops at about 4.5. See picture. Using the jog feature after initializing it does not go down any further. I want to run the hello world program but my sharpie is just over 2in from the wasteboard surface. In the tutorial the sharpie is supposed to be nearly touching the paper using the Z jog. I have also attached a photo looking down the Z mount. Anyone have a diagnosis for this issue?

Other photo here. I can only show one photo.
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Hey Dave, welcome to the family. This forum has had just about every question asked and answered…some of them dozens of times. So leaning to search for your answer is a great way to use this community.

PS: You’ll need to place a waste board on top of the wasteboard (has been one of the best methods to reach your work)

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If you have the Z plus on that machine then this thread may be helpful;

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That doesn’t look right imo. The belt drive Z should be able to go lower. Even a Z plus should be able to get about 1" from the collet nut to wasteboard.

Can you measure and make sure the Z is traveling a full 3" top to bottom?

ZPlus for reference. Look at the height of the router mount.

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Hi Dave,

I think your router power cord is hitting your suckit plastic arm in that pic. Happens to mine when I don’t rotate the cord away enough.

Edit. With it powered off you should be able to push the router so far down the bottom vee wheels come of the tracks

Cheers jason

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I had similar issue that was about to drive me nuts. I have a new Shapeoko XL, when I went to cut, it air cut, following the cut pattern, but not reaching the materials of cut. I had cut several items prior without issue and it worked fine. My problem upon discovery, and possibly your issue was that in my material setup it was set to the bottom of the materials. I changed this to use the top instead of the bottom and all was fixed. Simple but how it happened remains a mystery. Tom

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are you sure your router isn’t hitting the arms for your dust collector? it’s a little hard to see in the pictures but… you should be able to go lower than that so something is mechanically blocking

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