Recently I have been making some wood lighted Christmas trees. I carve a .5 inch hole for a countersink area and a smaller hole for the bulb to fit thought. It carves the countersink area fine and when it comes back to carve the smaller holes I hear a grinding like gears skipping a tooth. Then it starts air carving. It messes up my z zero. There isn’t anything blocking it. Its not a belt issue since its a z plus. It does this several times then works fine for a while. I tried to make a cribbage board and it did it again and I lost about .25 off my depth for the holes. Any help or duggestions would be appreciated.
The Z-Plus doesn’t reach as low as the belt-drive.
The Z Plus has a single mounting point for the router mounting collar. The Belt Drive X/Z has two mounting points one higher and one lower. Depending on where the user installs the mounting collar on the Front Z plate of the Belt Drive Z axis, there are two different operating heights. The Z Plus advertises 3 inches of travel and provides more than that. Your reach is different from that of the lower mounted point of the Belt Drive Z axis. There are 2 options for reaching work when using the Z Plus. A longer endmill or lifting the work up with say a spoilboard.
No it’s definitely not bottoming out. Most of the time I can cut down into my spoil board. I’m at a little bit of a disadvantage because I did not assemble this machine myself so I don’t know all of the working part. But it was working great and then it goes to drill these holes and I hear a little grinding noise in my Z gets to 0 all out of whack. I don’t know if there are gears to jump or anything I guess I’m going to have to disassemble it and try to see the inside behind the router and mount. I was hoping not to have to do this because I am behind in Christmas orders
If it’s not bottoming out, then it’s most likely lost steps due to too fast plunging — endmills are four times better at cutting to the side then plunge cutting — test and adjust feed rates accordingly.
I know when I was doing the Christmas trees I was lunging pretty aggressively. But the cribbage boards is pretty slow. I’ll have to double-check those settings I’m using Carveco on my cribbage boards because they have a drill tool paths. I’m using whatever stock setting they have in using a peck drill setting. I want to say that the plunge rate is 30 but I am not sure
Cribbage boards are hard, usually in hard/tough materials, and each hole represents a chance to lose a step.
It may be most expedient to use a slightly smaller endmill, and it will help a lot of you can use a helical/ramping in toolpath — precision will be helped by leaving a roughing clearance and taking a finishing pass.
Teak also contains silica, and will dull even carbide pretty quickly — check tools frequently and budget for new ones as needed when cutting such materials.