Chris,
I had probed from the same uncut portion on the spoilboard. I am glad to see I need to fix the 2” grid.
I see people are in agreement that the surfacing is only to a depth of .10” but the initial of center surfacing went to .141”. The second attempt went to .271 and finally when everything went haywire like a tornado in a trailer park the final measurement was .419”. Not quite 420….lol
See attached photos
I am by no means an expert, but I’m thinking either the bit is slipping, the z-axis is not behaving as it is supposed to, or the spoil-board is just massively not flat. Those are the only things I can think of that would cause an almost half inch variance like that. My bet is bit slipping. I have had that happen before on other machines. Mark a line with a marker where the bit meets the collet before you run, and check if it is in the same place after. It seems counter-intuitive, but bits can slip in the “down” direction. There are a lot of forces at play, especially with larger bits.
As you said it is counterintuitive but maybe that is the issue I will check. Is there anything that will help prevent this besides cranking down on the collect?
Thanks for the info and advice.
Making sure there’s no dust caught in it.
More pressure on the collet could help. They also make aftermarket precession collets/nuts that might give you a better grip. What are your feeds/speeds? This is a complete amateur’s guess, but if there is too much horizontal pressure on the bit from zooming across the board, maybe it is pulling on the bit. Also for an extra wide bit like that, if it is turning too fast, it is going to be unstable.
It’s possible it’s in the encoder feedback too. As the move command is executed the encoder should measure the move in pulses. This is what’s called a closed loop, an open loop just sends the move command with no way to verify the move. If the encoder signal was intermittent for some reason or the encoder coupling was loose you would lose pulses and the Z would continue to move until the expected pulse count was achieved. If you have a digital or dial indicator you could zero your Z, set the indicator against the collet or router the enter a g0 z-0.1 on the MDI scree that should move the Z down .1 then enter g0 z0 that should move the Z back up to 0. You could do this three or four times just make sure the Z is moving like it should.
After thinking about it a little more I would think it would throw a position error it the encoder pulse count was off. If you have a way to measure it it wouldn’t hurt though.
the feed was 50 inches/minute
Another newbie here. I just had the same issue in reverse on my router table (my Onefinity Elite is a few months out). I had used this router for some time and when I put in a trim bit for a job, after a few passes, it started lifting in the collet. I checked and sure enough the collet was loose, I tightened it again thinking I must have been absent minded and not tightened it. Unfortunately, after another couple passes, the bit raised up again (ruining two pieces of oak I might add). I am perplexed as to why, everything was clean and tight. Hearing your situation, it sounds eerily familiar and I’m wondering if you’re having the same problem. I also don’t have a solution unfortunately and am concerned about what is happening, a bad bit maybe, it was new after all.
New bits usually come coated in lots of oil to prevent rust. If you don’t get it all off, the bits move pretty easy in the collet.
I will check that immediately. Thanks for the information!!
I checked the but the bit had no oil residue. It was new but I’d owned it for several years and it had been wiped dry long ago, but I wanted to be sure.
I am a newbie too and learning a new thing almost everyday. It happened to me once. Cutting started at correct depth and then the bit slowly went deeper and deeper. Turned out the bit was not tight enough and started slipping down slowly as the router moved along x and y axes.
Hey all,
again,
You use the two wrenches hopefully, and not the red button and one wrench? Note that the red button can block and fail and make the router unusable.
This may be confusing but .1 of an inch is about 1/8th and not 1/10 of an inch. That’s a lot to take out for surfacing. Inch is divided into 8, 16, 32 and so on. If you do 5-6 passes you have roughly effectively removed 3/4 th of an inch. That’s about the thickness of mdf that you get from big box stores.
Start with 1/16th of an inch , start from center of the board and probe accurately for z.
Not sure what you are trying to say here. 0.1” is exactly 1/10 of an inch, whereas 0.125” is an 1/8 of an inch.
Well then… that pretty much explains the title of this thread.
I was trying to say that fraction of inch is normally expressed in 1/8th 1/16 so on. If you are removing .1 that’s a lot of material for surfacing removed from the spoil board. You probably removed a lot of material and the bit reached the QCW frame , or the z probe was probably off
I run pocket program. Touch off on surface, run program. I take two pocket passes at .025 per pass.
It was the very first time the router was used, but it did check it and it was clean. I have read about this on this forum before.
Thanks for reiterating it, I had to think if I looked at it but I did, Great Advice!!
My new router arrives today and I was thinking the same thing by using the step function on the machine and surfacing manually. I know it sounds long and tedious but hey I am a newbie and this will be my 2nd try on surfacing.
