pattern not carving right

[Gerald Bennett]

well, it is hitting the plate fine, cleaned out the back of the z motor, which looked clean when I opened it, can't find anything loose so I guess a call to LHR on Monday is the next step. was hoping to get 5 projects out for Christmas but unless someone has time to run them for me that isn't happening

[fwharris]

Gerald,

Did your other carve, the one after your noel come out ok??

Are the bits tight in the adapters? Some times they can slip just a bit inside the adapter..

[temler]

HI
I tried your design with a subtractive merge on all the text on the outside of the circle and it seems to work. Not sure if that would help you or not but i can't see anything else wrong but I am just somewhat of a newbie. I will try it again once i get my machine fixed.

Thanks
Tim

[Digitalwoodshop]

A few thoughts...

Do you have the new Z or the Old Z? New Z shorter cooling fins?

Did you watch the bit plate touch.... Everyone should EVERY TIME.

A stop short of touching the Bit Plate can be caused by the Z rollers being dirty.... And will cause the problem you mentioned...

AL

[Gerald Bennett]

Gerald,

Did your other carve, the one after your noel come out ok??

Are the bits tight in the adapters? Some times they can slip just a bit inside the adapter..

no, the machine seems to be getting worse. One with a truck in that I had carved before came out with several different depths, for the heck of it I changed the depths on the noel panels and they started out ok but by the time they were at 10% I aborted them as there were different depths showing in it. I had hoped that taking the back cover off the z motor would help as one of the screws had a lot of sawdust on its threads but the inside seemed clean and is worse now than before I tried to clean it.

I am wondering if it is at least in part a vibration issue, I bought the materials to put together a scanning sled and will see what happens when I try scanning an object tomorrow. At the moment this is proving to be depressing but I am sure others had the same problems until they got things going smoothly. If it does scan good then I would lean toward vibration causing problems and from what I have read a rock would help with that.

I haven't tried to do anything with the adapters as I thought they were cemented in place, these are the stock bits. If you think it would help to see the actual boards I could cut out the portion I let run and send them to you, maybe seeing the actual cut would make it easier to tell what is happening.

[Gerald Bennett]

A few thoughts...

Do you have the new Z or the Old Z? New Z shorter cooling fins?

Did you watch the bit plate touch.... Everyone should EVERY TIME.

A stop short of touching the Bit Plate can be caused by the Z rollers being dirty.... And will cause the problem you mentioned...

AL

I pretty much always watch the machine doing its pre-cut steps, have to be there anyways I can usually see the bit plate move a tiny amount when the bit touches, if that is not normal I can get a clip of it so you can see how much movement of the plate there is, heck if it would help as soon as these problems start I could make a recording of the whole process, its quite consistent if nothing else .

This machine is a rev "B" and I have only had it about 2 months so I would assume its a new Z but have nothing to compare it to. I have some chain lube left from doing the flex shaft so could use that on the truck if you think that would help but it seems to move smoothly

[fwharris]

I pretty much always watch the machine doing its pre-cut steps, have to be there anyways I can usually see the bit plate move a tiny amount when the bit touches, if that is not normal I can get a clip of it so you can see how much movement of the plate there is, heck if it would help as soon as these problems start I could make a recording of the whole process, its quite consistent if nothing else .

This machine is a rev "B" and I have only had it about 2 months so I would assume its a new Z but have nothing to compare it to. I have some chain lube left from doing the flex shaft so could use that on the truck if you think that would help but it seems to move smoothly

The bit plate will move down a little when the bit touches so that sounds normal..

With the power off the z truck should move freely up and down with out any roughness to the movement..

another possible is the gear box on the z truck. It could be loose and the gears slipping. how is the tension on the belt?

[Gerald Bennett]

The bit plate will move down a little when the bit touches so that sounds normal..

With the power off the z truck should move freely up and down with out any roughness to the movement..

another possible is the gear box on the z truck. It could be loose and the gears slipping. how is the tension on the belt?

The movement seems smooth to me, hmmm a gear slipping I could see that as it would be an inconsistent amount of slippage which is what I have, the depths change when the bit lifts to move the board forward, going across in the y direction seems the same across the cut so don' think it sounds like a loose truck. Time to find and read up on checking the gears and belt tension. Probably be the morning before I pull it apart again.

[fwharris]

I brought up the gear box on the Z truck because when I got my Z pack upgrade I ended up with a loose screw that mounts the gear box to the Z motor. This resulted in the gears not not staying aligned all of the time. Only way to find out is to take the z motor off. Procedure to use is the z pack replacement. Found on the customer service page
http://www.carvewright.com/cms/customer_service

http://www.carvewright.com/images/se...motor_only.pdf

Digital Al has some pictures posted on the difference between the old and new z packs. Here is one post I found. http://forum.carvewright.com/showthr...hlight=z+motor
A call to LHR should also be able to tell you if you have the old or new zpack based on your machine ID.

[Gerald Bennett]

Based on those pictures in Al's post I have the new Z, the easiest to tell on is the one showing the rear of the motor pack as the black cover is different between the two versions.

The dogs decided I needed to be up early so out to the garage to take off the z pack, at least the replacement directions don't show any thread lock used in the process so this should be easy enough to do.