Hey guys; I started a 3 stage carve this morning. 1st stage was to carve out a pocket, 2nd stage was engraving on the top of the just carved out pocket and the third step was to cut a profile path thru the material around the initial pocket carve (star shaped).
Sadly, after the second carve was complete and I was about to start the profile path cut out my breaker tripped and the 1F turned off.
How can I get as close as possible to the original XY origin for the first two carves? I don’t have a probe. I can’t say with 100% certainty the XY origin was in an exact spot (in other words, I have no way to find it).
Only thing I could come up with is to try my best to find center and tell Easel that’s my X0 and Y0 origin. That, of course will not be easy and I fear it will be too inaccurate.
Any suggestions? The photo below shows what I’m working on. On my current workpiece (the one in question) I have yet to complete the profile path which you can see being carved in this photo.
One option would be to create a point of reference on your work material that you are able to easily duplicate in your CAM software. You should then be able to assign that point with a specific location value from your carve.
if the piece has not moved you could start over on the second carving perhaps by offsetting a new vector just a bit smaller than the previous one? I am new here so don’t go by what i ay as gosple but that is what i would try
It seems unlikely that the cost of starting over would be greater than the cost of trying to recover here and potentially failing then starting over. So just start over. Take it as a lesson learned. Get a probe or at least mark your 0,0 location, and don’t cut it off until you no longer need it. I’ve done that.
BTW, you also need to figure out how to avoid those breaker trips. Eventually you may be in the middle of a 6 hour 3D carve and have it trip. 2 separate circuits with little or no other loads on them would be best. 1 circuit for the CNC and another for your router & vacuum.
Yeah, I’m sort of feeling the same way - about starting over completely. Or I can try and find zero and maybe get lucky but once I realize it’s off I’ll shut it down n start over.
That’s actually a very common sense approach that I didn’t think about. It’s funny because I have grid lines on my spoilboard and always square my piece up on the grid accordingly so I didn’t even stop and think about moving the xy to a nice clean number like you mentioned which is both easy to remember and repeatable.
I’d say 90% of the projects I make are exactly how @mtannerdesigns says, referencing from 2", 2". I like to use bench dogs for fast and consistent positioning of material, and they are easy to remove if needed.
thanks guys, it has been very beneficial to me - to locate x/y zero at a known and whole number. I’ve had multiple hiccups that have required a ‘reset’.
it also works great for items that require multiple carves, or items that are removed from the bed and reinserted for secondary milling. I just recently completed a crib board with epoxy-inlayed, lane designations. I did not want to fill the crib peg holes with epoxy, so it was cut the lanes, epoxy the lanes, sand and flatten, then mill the holes. Worked great using 40.0/40.0 (mm) as my x/y.
I ALWAYS write down my absolute locations after i set my “X” and “Y” location. Re home machine…MDI absolute coordinates…set “Z” tool touch off and carry on.
