Blue smoke fills the shop.

[jab73180]

i know what the problem is, but i hope LHR will fix it. I am carving parts for ammo boxes for my friend and i carve the initials in the front of the box with centerline text. I am carving 3" initials into pine with helvetica font. My bit is clear from pitch and debris. Im thinking the problem is the glitch in which the centerline text gives a check cut motor message. The motor turns more rpm's after i hit ok and that is burning the wood. With the 3" letters, they are very deep, if LHR gave us the opportunity to set our own depth, i could set it as a shallower cut. Instead of the 5/16 cut it takes now, i could set it to 3/16 or shallower if it looks good. I dont see the problem with that, you can tell the machine to cut deeper than that with vector carvings, not that i do. Anyway, the ability not to go deeper, but go shallower would be great.

[rjustice]

Jason,
There is a way to fool the machine. If you put a shim on the workpiece during the touch off, by how much you wish to go shallower, then stop the machine and pull it out, it would cut that much less in depth.

Hope this helps...

Ron

[jab73180]

Jason,
There is a way to fool the machine. If you put a shim on the workpiece during the touch off, by how much you wish to go shallower, then stop the machine and pull it out, it would cut that much less in depth.

Hope this helps...

Ron

great idea ron thanx, i have seen that before but forgot about it. there are so many machine tricks it is hard to keep track of them all. i think my bit might be dull too after closer inspection.

[mtylerfl]

Jason,
There is a way to fool the machine. If you put a shim on the workpiece during the touch off, by how much you wish to go shallower, then stop the machine and pull it out, it would cut that much less in depth.

Hope this helps...

Ron

Use a little caution with that technique, though. The bit raises up from the work surface by a certain amount when it is traveling during bit positioning before lowering down to perform a carve or cutout. If the shim is higher than whatever-that-amount is, it could collide with, or drag along, the work surface and lead to 'bad things'.

The "big" CNC machines can be manually programmed for the amount the bit 'lifts' from the work surface when the spindle needs to travel from one location to another (the purpose for manual entry of bit-lift is usually to specify an adequate height to miss clamps and/or other hardware holding down a workpiece), but we cannot specify that on the CW machines.

EDIT: My reasoning may be faulty for that example...you are wanting to go shallower, so maybe the bit-lift concern doesn't apply here. I'm thinking of the 'trick' that some folks use for doing Centerline within a carve region, and are wanting to trick the machine to go deeper. That's kind of a 'dangerous' workaround.

[rjustice]

Michael,
Agreed... If you are trying to trick the machine to use centerline text deeper into a carve region, you definitely take the risk of the bit dragging on the highest area if the tool indeed ends up outside of the recessed area.
In the case of trying to make it go shallower though, i cannot think of a case that this would cause problem...

Thanks for watching out for the team!

Ron

[mtylerfl]

Michael,
Agreed... If you are trying to trick the machine to use centerline text deeper into a carve region, you definitely take the risk of the bit dragging on the highest area if the tool indeed ends up outside of the recessed area.
In the case of trying to make it go shallower though, i cannot think of a case that this would cause problem...

Thanks for watching out for the team!

Ron

Hi Ron,

Yes, I think he'll be ok too - the bit-lift would actually be higher in his situation using the technique you described, so I can't think of any reason why that would cause any mechanical problem either. The only possible issue might be that the lettering may not look quite right if the carve is performed too shallow (i.e., if the shim is too thick).

As we all know, the Centerline function calculates the depth automatically to create the correct letter shape That's why there is no option for manually adjusting depth of the Centerline carve itself - the letters wouldn't come out right. Like others, I would sure enjoy seeing some type of option for adjusting at least the starting surface depth for Centerline (for running Centerline within a Carve Region, for example).

Thanks for sharing the tip!

[bjbethke]

i know what the problem is, but i hope LHR will fix it. I am carving parts for ammo boxes for my friend and i carve the initials in the front of the box with centerline text. I am carving 3" initials into pine with helvetica font. My bit is clear from pitch and debris. Im thinking the problem is the glitch in which the centerline text gives a check cut motor message. The motor turns more rpm's after i hit ok and that is burning the wood. With the 3" letters, they are very deep, if LHR gave us the opportunity to set our own depth, i could set it as a shallower cut. Instead of the 5/16 cut it takes now, i could set it to 3/16 or shallower if it looks good. I dont see the problem with that, you can tell the machine to cut deeper than that with vector carvings, not that i do. Anyway, the ability not to go deeper, but go shallower would be great.
Hi Jason,
Did you get this problem fixed? I found you can control the depth of Centerline by making your pattern as a Dingbat and adjust the line thickness in a Font Creator.

I do not have the helvetica font, but if you send me a image of the three inch initials I could make a new font Dingbat for you so it will not carve too deep.

[jab73180]

Hi Jason,
Did you get this problem fixed? I found you can control the depth of Centerline by making your pattern as a Dingbat and adjust the line thickness in a Font Creator.

I do not have the helvetica font, but if you send me a image of the three inch initials I could make a new font Dingbat for you so it will not carve too deep.

hey, i am going to try the "trick the machine" method that Ron suggested. i think that is the easiest to do for me. i want to keep it as simple as i can. thanx though!!