I am trying to carve a bowl on a 18”W x 9.875"H x 2”Thick material. Using Aspire the imported STL design shows perfectly centered. I am setting the XY Datum to the lower left as I always use. After importing the STL I centered it relative to the material. As I said the shown carve in Aspire is centered. When running the carve, it does not center in the material. I rebooted several times, homed the machine and reset the XYZ probe. Same problem. Never had this problem before. Any suggestions?
the zero point must be set on the machine to the same position on the real workpiece as the zero point in your software 3D model.
Probing with the touch probe will set zero on the axes you request, but if you probe X,Y on the left corner of the workpiece, the workpiece zero point of course cannot result in being located in the center of the workpiece.
The most simple way to set the workpiece zero point is to manually (gamepad, arrow buttons on Jog Pad on display) move the X,Y axes to the position on the workpiece you want the zero point to be, and then click “zero” on the corresponding axes on display:
Then you can zero the remaining Z with the cnc zero paper method.
Neil, haven’t tried that yet but it may be an option. I’ve always set the datum the same. I’ve got a msg in to Infinity support. Hopefully they’ll be able to help. Thx for your response.
I agree there are several ways to locate workpiece zero. I have always used the left corner of the material for XY and set the Job Setup in Aspire to recognize that. It then has always centered the model in the material and cut accordingly. In this instance Aspire is showing the model in the material center as desired. I have contacted Infinity support for their input. As a last resort, I may have to use the method you stated below of moving the axes to the center of the workpiece and probing from there. I just want to understand why this time the carve deviated from what had been working correctly for me for two years.
it seems to me that when you say “I centered it relative to the material”, you mean that 3D model and workpiece correspond, i.e. occupy the same space?
But the CNC machine can only know where is has to believe the model is located by sharing one information with the 3D model: The workpiece zero point (or part zero), which means X=0, Y=0, Z=0. On your bowl model, where is this position located?
Good morning. Just wanted to let you know how things turned out. After trying to zero the workpiece in the center vs. my normal method of using the lower left corner of the workpiece with no success, I decided to validate my mechanics with regard to homing, zeroing, etc. I did this with a simple test of a circle on a similar size material. Test worked perfect. So, I then completely started over with a new file, importing the STL file, etc. I rechecked all settings against my original file to make sure they were the same. The new file worked perfectly. At this point I am going to assume there was some glitch in either the original Aspire design file or the Infinity file that would not allow the carve to center. I guess a rule to remember is, if you can’t fix it, start over!
I really appreciate your help. Thanks and have a Happy Holidays.
