Hi everyone! I am obviously new to the CNC world and my experience with it so far has shown my lack of knowledge. I went through the video on making the Onefinity sign that is already loaded on my machine. I homed it, secured my workpiece, probed for XYZ, made sure the bit was the correct size, and then probed for Z. When I hit play on the file, it asks me if the bit is correct and if it has been probed for Zero. At this point the router is at the lower left corner of my workpiece. I click continue and it lowers straight down and keeps going down until it Estops and I get the error message that it hit the soft limit. So it basically drills a 1/4" hole in the corner of my workpiece and then stops with an error message. I tried this several times and made sure that I probed for Z correctly. It never moves to the right or up to start carving, it just goes straight down.
Any ideas what I am doing wrong to screw this up? I’m 100% sure it is user error, but not sure of anything else! Any help would be appreciated. I figured cutting this sign with the preloaded file would be a small win that I could build off of. So far, my machine has other ideas for me. LOL.
Maybe take screen shot of the control terminal. There is a lot of experts on this forum It could be you didn’t zero out properly or look at the gcode of the practice file (maybe its for a different controller) or z zero is at the bottom and its trying to cut through the piece
Setting Z0 can be a little tricky to wrap your head around and get right when your starting out.
There’s a number of reasons this could be caused, but the first two best things to look into are;
Once you get all set up, and ready to press cycle start, double check the X, Y, and Z are set correctly by jogging the machine to X0, Y0, and Z0 manually. Use the readout to know when you have positioned the tip of the cutter to X0, Y0, and Z0. The tip of the cutter should be in a spot that makes sense. Most people use the lower left corner of the work, at the top of the material.
When programming, you need to make sure the X0, Y0, Z0 reference point is set correctly. If your toolpaths are set to run with Z0 programmed at the top of the material, but you then set Z0 at the machine at the bottom of the material, the machine will start by plunging into the material as you described.
I think someone else had this problem, the other way around. They were trying to cut the test file for an Elite on a Pro and couldn’t figure out why it was out of whack.
Do they include test files for both? Not sure why they would but give it a look that you aren’t just using the wrong file.
Thank you. I am going to just make a simple project on Vcarve myself and see if that works out for me. I tried multiple times with this test file and it just isn’t working out.
Which machine and controller did you get? I did not make my first cut the test piece. I have Carvco and made a circle cut with a .25" bit. I zeroed X and Y by eye and Z with a piece of paper. Then moved the bit up and away from 0-0-0. Then started the program. I am woundering if your zeros are not getting set correctly.
That’s completely different set-up. Someone on the forum will be able to help. The forum is why I chose OneFinity. If you are like me when you solve this you’ll go Duh!