Well after a long wait I have the machine, and managed to get it all set up this week. It appears that OF upgraded my initial purchase of the X-50 to the Pro without making any mention (Long story, not complaining just more to that I don’t want to dive into) So I have followed all the instructions to the Best I can but most concerning is the Z-20 Slider thickness.
When this machine is mounted on the QWC Frame w/ Rolling Stand and the Wasteboard is cut to 41.5" and centered and mounted per instructions I have some Concerns due to being so New to this. I’m positive OF & users are very aware of these things but I would just like additional clarification as it’s not mentioned from what I saw in the pdfs.
If you home the machine it brings the bit to the far bottom left corner, that bit is hovering above air and off the Spoil board at this point, when I surfaced my spoil board the first pass along the bottom was the machine taking the bit along without cutting anything, Doesn’t seem the safest but due to positioning I suppose I could adjust the overhang of the spoil board (maybe people are doing this?) The measurements of the surfaced area do fall within the 48x32" as promised, but what about the homing? Is that pointless now or need to be adjusted to account for this?
Also when surfacing it only goes so Far back 32"+~ as that’s the furthest the bit can physically reach leaving the last 10 or so inches unsurfaced .020 lower than the original surface. How do people go about flattening the remaining amount for the event of laying full sheets of material on the machine and tilling?
I’m sure this is all by design and understood by the folks at OF, I would just like to know if there are things I need to be aware of or considering with this setup or any adjustments to consider, or maybe if I missed any additional documentation.
So appears the option is to make the 41.5" boards shorter to simply meet the cutting area (Back area). Though I see it says not to build a table in the constraints of the 4 legs, that’s a rather silly statement considering it’s also stated ( where you will have no support for a wasteboard) So they are acknowledging no support for the wasteboard, but then stating ("don’t build a table or enclosure that ends at the machine’s front feet) for a machine that’s on a Frame and legs
So for all intensive purposes that is wasted area that won’t be used for milling (that’s ok) though what should I take into considerations with the “homing” aspect of the machine? Or just using my probe to position off the corner of my boards should be good enough? or maybe I’m just overthinking the entire purpose of that homing command…
I quoted what was already said in a previous thread, so it doesn’t apply to a machine mounted on the rolling or the folding stand. It’s clear you don’t build an anti-torsion box made of 12 mm birch plywood on top of these (usually)
Homing is done only once after machine startup. It is not needed after that, and as explained below, should be avoided.
Homing does not need to be over the usable workarea. Its purpose is to let the machine now where its X, Y and Z carriages are, since they could have been moved while the machine was off. See also ➪ Homing vs. Zeroing.
In the ‘tool-change’ routine, that is run every time a tool-change event (M6 command) is encountered in the g-code toolpath, it returns to this “home” position too, since the leftmost, frontmost and topmost position is the most comfortable position to manually change the bit. However in ➪ my ‘tool change’ routine, it does not perform the ➪ stall homing (=bumping against the travel end) (➪ see also here), again every time, but is just moving there, without stall homing, because stall homing is not accurate and will never home at the same position, so you would loose position accuracy after each tool change. Therefore, my ‘tool-change’ routine goes to this home position not with the homing command, but by (G53 – Moving in machine coordinates) with the commands:
G53 G0 Z0 G53 G0 X0 Y0
Generally, for position repeatability even over power shutdowns, it would be necessary to ➪ retrofit limit sensors to have accurate, repeatable homing, instead of using the generally not accurate stall homing. The buildbotics-derived Onefinity and the Buildbotics controllers support the connection of limit sensors.
Ok thanks for clarifying all that information, makes me feel a little better. So just keep doing what I’m doing and using the Probe Sensor to Probe xyz before each new cut and I should be golden.
