Carving bits are for carving not cut paths.
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When I said "designs" I was talking about the project you are making and the design elements you are placing on the board. All patterns and carve region areas including raster text style you can set the bit optimization tool to different setting to improve the carving detail. Most often "best" is the better setting. To improve the carve quality and the amount of sanding you need to do after each carve use as least the "best" setting for the upload to the card. Great job of grounding your dust collection system.
The maximum cutting depth for the 1/8" and 3/16" "cutting" bits is 1.0" There are no cutting bits that can cut deeper than 1". You can use them to cut a path that you can then follow with a band saw or scroll saw to finish cutting out.
This is a link to the bit description page that will show you the cutting/carving parameters of each bit.
http://www.carvewright.com/bits/
I can live with cutting them out. Most of the stuff I want to do is either 1-1/2" or 1-3/4" material.
Today's learning adventure was all about board not loading - caused by low head pressure I find out. I never did check head pressure on initial startup because I didn't own a bathroom scale. Now I do. I was in the 35 to 40lb range, probably explains the tracking problems I've been having.
Cleaned & lubed, no better. Followed the 7 pages of procedure for low head pressure, did the guide post alignment a few times, got it up to 65 to 70 lbs. Probably enough to load a board now, but still under spec. I'll call the tech line next week and see what they have to say.
Yes the bathroom scale is probably the less used tool for the machine and should be used each day/time when you are starting up a new session of carves.
To increase the head pressure you can add a thin washer onto the shaft of the crank handle. The old machines had extra washers on top of the two right corner posts. You would need to remove the end cap (lateral stabilizer) to find them. They might be stuck in the grease and be on the under side if the stabilizer.
https://store.carvewright.com/produc...cat=255&page=2
https://store.carvewright.com/produc...cat=255&page=1
Found a thin fiber washer the perfect size in a drawer of carburetor parts I had saved for some unknown reason. My head pressure now is right around 75 to 80 lbs. I fired it up, put my piece of MDF in, and away it went. Just like it was meant to be. :cool:
I was loading a piece of 3/4" MDF today for a test carve, and the machine stopped after measuring board thickness, and prompted me to enter board thickness. Any idea what that's all about?
It measured the thickness different than what you had it set at in the board settings in Designer. Was your board on a sled/jig?