Anyone have some clever tips on re-locating the machine’s origin and/or the stock for follow up operations?
It’s happened to me twice now that I’ve pulled a workpiece off the waste board and/or reset a center point zero THEN decided I wanted to perform another machining operation.
Oops…stock is no longer in original position and I’ve reset the machine’s XY zero too.
I’ve been able to re-orient the stock by indexing the stock to major features while re-running (air cutting) the ‘old’ gcode, but it’s very slow. Took me an hour once since there is no way to ‘fast forward’ through the gcode.
Now I record the ABS XY origin as part of every job, but it doesn’t help with orienting the stock.
You need to be able to at least ensure it is realigned squarely. A fence of some sort…
Then as long as you have a spot that is still original thickness you can prob for z off of that. (this is the only benefit I can see of zeroing off of the wasteboard.)
You can generally ey all your x and y with a super fine v bit if you don’t have enough meat for the touchprobe left assuming the corner is still intact (also a major reason I use the lower left corner and not center of workpiece for xy but you could always use math to fined the center based on corners or edges.)
This is precisely why I lasered a 10mm grid pattern on my wasteboard to give repeatable line up capability to my setup. Home your machine first and then using an array pattern of lines for your grid, print it with your laser. I also added numbers to identify each line. Set your square stock on any convenient xy line crossing, probe your stock and take note of the absolute position on your screen. Write that down and you can always come back to it.
I clamp a piece of scrap wood in front of the stock, such that I’m sure I can reference the angle it was at when I machine. I have seen squares that some attach semi-permanently on their wasteboard.
I have not needed squares yet. Another option that I recently became aware of (but have not tried) is an Haimler 3D Sensor. It’s 12mm shank so it requires an adapter for the Makita router…
If the orientation is consistent, with the probe it’s fairly easy to reset the XYZ.