I got my woodworker set up with my QCW and was preparing to do a surface toolpath, I homed it, but as I zeroed my x and y axis at the center of the wasteboards (at the halfway points of the overall dimensions of the QCW board surface: 20 3/4" and 17 11/16"), and the y axis errored that the toolpath would put it over the limits. I ran the y axis front to back, and I noticed that when the router is full forward, it is actually about a half inch past the board surface. Is this normal?
Hey Gil,
I already gave you the answer here:
This means that you have a g-code program loaded that would mill outside the workspace of the machine (outside the limits). Either you adjust the size of your 3D model so that it fits the workspace of 816 Ă— 816 Ă— 133 mm (165 mm for Z-20), or you set the workpiece zero (by probing or manually setting it) at a position so that the 3D model does not exceed the limits of the machine.
Since your 3D model is 527 cm × 449 cm wide, which is smaller than the X and Y dimensions of the Woodworker machine so should fit, I suggest to assume that you’ve set your zero coordinate on the real workpiece center at the wrong position, as the 3D model seems to exceed the workspace limits (=does not match the real workpiece’s position)
The workpiece zero you probe or set manually on the real workpiece has always to be at the same position as the workpiece zero (workpiece “origin”) in your 3D model.
So what you’re saying and what I’m seeing is, by inference, if one uses the qcw provided by onefinity, you don’t actually get 32x32” of cutting area?
With all of the documentation provided for the unit, why would that not be disclosed somewhere in the manuals or specs?
I did read your comment about the dust boot hanging over, but missed that the bit would also be outside the board.
So, with the qcw, what I actually have is 31x32 cutting area, is that right?
I think you misunderstood here; those measurements were the distances relative to the qcw board, e.g, half of 41.5” and 35 3/8”, so the “center” of the board on the qcw. That is the point I marked on the board and positioned the router for zeroing x and y.
Gil,
The over hang is there and accounts for having a tool setter attached to the front of the QCW frame. You do lose a bit of y if you chose to set it up this way or you can extend the wasteboards beyond the front but it will not have support so I would not suggest that… If you have the 80mm mount you lose a tad bit more distance, but should be negligible. As Aiph5u mentioned you also can’t reach several inches in the back so you can cut your boards shorter than the frame or you will have a lip after surfacing and that would prevent you from properly tiling or milling your work piece if it is longer than the Y axis. Same for the two side pieces, at least on my Journeyman.
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Hey Gil,
user@søjf:~ bc -l
(35+3/8)*25.4
898.52500000000000000000
41.5*25.4
1054.10
Ah okay, 898.5 Ă— 1054.1 mm.
As explained above, neither the QCW Frame nor its wasteboard slats are where the machine’s workarea is (=the area between the limits of where the milling motor can mill). You already discovered that. So you got to create a virtual 3D model that corresponds to not more than the real workarea (which is 816 × 816 mm on Woodworker, however on the front there is no wasteboard so you would “mill air” there, which does not harm) and then to position it not in the middle of the QCW frame (as explained above), but in the middle of the Woodworker’s real workarea.
The questions you should ask yourself are:
- What are the dimensions of your virtual 3D model?
- Did you probe or set manually workpiece zero so that the 3D model is inside the limits of the machine’s real workarea (the limits of where the milling motor can mill) (and not in the middle of the QCW frame, nor in the middle of the area covered with wasteboard slats, which both will not be correct).
Note that you could also make your life easier and use the front top left corner as the workpiece origin. Then you measure the area that is covered with wasteboard slats and create a virtual 3D model of this size, and then you probe the workpiece zero by using the XYZ touch plate on the front top left corner of the leftmost wasteboard slat. This way you avoid the necessity to know how much the real machine’s workarea is shifted in relation to the area covered with wasteboard slats of the QCW Frame (that also depends on whether you have Z-16 or Z-20 Z assembly, 65 mm or 80 mm milling motor, so cannot be known as one general value).
Since with this method you include the area that is not accessible on the rear, you will still get a limits error, but when you jog your router/spindle to the back and mill a thin line of shallow depth with a V-bit, you can mark a line at the end of the real workarea, and this way you can know how much of the rear region is not accessible and subtract it from the virtual 3D model’s depth dimension, until you get no limits error anymore.
You could also jog around all four sides at their extreme limits, milling a thin line with the v-bit, to see the real workarea of the machine.
You already know, as I explained above, that there is a rather large portion of the area where the t-tracks reach to the rear and that can be covered with the wasteboard slats, that never will be accessible by the milling motor. If your virtual 3D model includes this region in the rear, it’s clear that you get a limits error. You cannot surface or mill in this rear area. That’s a design issue of the QCW Frame and can only be avoided by not using the QCW frame, but building your own machine base instead.
You still have the workarea of 816 Ă— 816 mm (32" Ă— 32"), but when using the QCW Frame, there is a region in the front where there is not wasteboard, but only air.
Yes, you missed it:
I should have been more exact and write “the milling motor and the bit that is in the milling motor […] protrude beyond the front edge of the QCW Frame, where there is not wasteboard but only air.”
The exact value of the area that has no wasteboard depends on whether you have Z-16 or Z-20 Z assembly installed, and 65 mm or 80 mm milling motor, so cannot be known as one general value.
You still have the entire accessible workarea like the machine is sold with, but with QCW Frame the wasteboard slats do not reach to the front of the machine’s real workarea. If you manage to have some additional wasteboard there, you could use the entire workarea.
This seems like a much better way, my process of using the center came from watching youtube videos of other 1F users, but admittedly they weren’t usign the QCW and I didn’t recognize that would make a difference.
That said, if I plan to change this up to use the top left as my toolpath origin in my model, why wouldn’t I just jog the machine to the top left as far as it would go and then use that point as my zero for x and y? Sorry if that is a dumb question, but it seems like the easiest way rather than using the XYZ touch plate that I didn’t receive when my unit shipped (I received a card that said it would be coming later when they are back in stock).
Attaching gcode with a top left origin from carbide create that I just made in case looking at it will help
surfacing_top_left.nc (2.3 KB)
Of course you can set the workpiece zero manually this way. You just got to be accurate in positioning it over the corner.
The XYZ touch plate is a very useful accessory (makes the procedure faster than manually setting workpiece zero). Note that this touch plate will not produce correct results when probing X and Y with a surfacing bit or a V-bit (see also here), in this case you use a rod, or and endmill inserted backwards as probe instead and reinstall the surfacing or v-bit to probe only Z separately then. Probing Z with the V-bit, on the other hand, will go more precisely and faster with the touch plate than setting zero manually.
See also
Support videos:
- How to use the XYZ Touch Probe
- How to Probe a V-Bit on the Onefinity CNC
- Manually Setting X,Y,Z Zero on the Onefinity CNC
- Onefinity Touch Probe Fine Tuning
Accessories
For the purpose of surfacing the wasteboard from the top left, wouldn’t the accurate point be as far to the top left as the machine will travel though, so accuracy would be automatic in this case? I totally understand the point of zeroing on your workpiece when you’re cutting something that is on top of your wasteboard, and I’m eagerly waiting on my touch plate to arrive–I know in the meantime I’ll have to accept the potential for a reduction in accuracy when working with actual workpieces.
Hey Gil,
I did not assemble a QCW Frame myself yet. Is there an area of the wasteboards slats on the left and the right side that cannot be accessed too? In this case you would also get a limits error when including them in the model. So in this case the method to make the real workarea visible I mentioned above is even more useful: Put a v-bit into the milling motor, and with the gamepad or the Jog Pane and finest step resolution selected, jog around the four sides at their extreme limits by creating a line of shallow depth. Then you measure the width and depth and use these measurements to create your virtual 3D model, and at same time you have the front left corner of the milled rectangle as the point where to manually zero.
Aw, no, that will not work, as on the front left corner of the real workarea there is only air. Okay, so we would use one of the rear corners of the rectangle created with the v-bit to manually zero (and we would need to put the workpiece origin at the rear too in the virtual 3D model). Note that the position of the workpiece origin has nothing to do with the position where the toolpath will start to mill. The workpiece zero is nothing more than a common reference between the virtual 3D model and the real workpiece.
By the way, you can also check if both diagonals in this milled rectangle are equal, which would mean that your machine is accurately rectangular (=“squared”)
Yes there are areas similar to the area in the back. I have seen some folks either remove them completely or trim them down. PWNCNC uses the area on the left as part of the ATC from what I have seen.
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I have a pro model, a tool setter isn’t something I can leverage in that space for my unit, is it?
Tool setter only works on elite.
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No, just the elite that I am aware of.
So then my assessment above that I don’t actually have a 32x32 cutting area when using the QCW is seemingly accurate since the QCW will not actually be under the full 32x32 cutting area of the unit for the non-elite models, and even for the elite models part of that 32x32 space would potentially be taken up by the tool setter. Is this documented anywhere in the presales materials where I could have found out this fact before purchasing the configuration that I ultimately chose? If not, this seems like a misstep, not sure if it’s a misstep of marketing or design…
Hey Gil,
it is not the design of the Onefinity CNC machine that makes a region of the workarea unusable, it’s the QCW Frame. Its wasteboard slats and T-tracks cover an area that is not identical with the machine’s workarea.
Before the QCW Frame was offered, the machine came – and still comes – without a machine base, you got to provide one yourself, and if you follow the advices regarding space to reserve around the machine when building a machine base (most use a table with a tabletop), the entire workarea will be usable.
Regarding the toolsetter, the area that it needs is rather small. You could also imagine a pivoting toolsetter that is out of the way when machining the workpiece. On industrial machines, you loose even more workarea for a tool magazine or an area where a tool revolver magazine is accessible (usually on right rear end of the workarea). Some machines have an X axis that is longer than the usable workarea, just to be able to drive the spindle over a carriage with a tool magazine.
I think what Onefinity sells you is a true 32" × 32" workarea, because usually this means the limits of the axes travel. For a Woodworker model, this is 816 × 816 mm, as shown in the “Limits” sections of MOTORS 0–2.
So I agree that many things should be better documented, in this case it’s the QCW wasteboard and T-tracks area being not identical with the machine’s workarea.
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That is correct, but Onefinity sells these items as a compatible complete solution, and if there is fine print that said a customer would not get the 32x32 cutting area when using the QCW, it might influence buyers to rethink that decision, or at least factor that into their purchase and planning process. If the marketing materials for the woodworker said “32x32 (unless you’re using the QCW)”, or had a disclaimer on the QCW page like they do about the “important note” regarding the 80mm spindles on the woodworker pro listing, then that would be truth in advertising.
What’s done is done, but it doesn’t feel right to find this out after the fact. Hoping someone from 1F notices this and at least does something about it for future customers.
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For what it’s worth, I was looking at the toolsetter manual and how it mounts to the QCW (even though I know I can’t use it for the elite), and it got me thinking about the possibility of someone manufacturing little extenders to mount the same way as the toolsetter mount (it uses the existing bolts that hold the t-track pieces to the frame) that would give a tiny amount of t-track and framing on the other side of that frame bar–of course it would have to be milled out of metal instead of plastic, but would allow for any wasteboard you installed to be supported where there is only air today.
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