old steam engine carve

[diverdill]

Well, i finally gave up and used a piece of cedar, it carved great until end of 6 hour carve. The carve went to almost the end of steam engine stack and then jumped six inches, cut a grove across the board and stopped. Its like it just decided whatever and quit carving the pattern. Can this be fixed ? Can i just carve right over it? Is is possible to just send it back thru and hope it carves the whole train the second time? Susan

[DocWheeler]

Sounds like the board lost contact with the brass roller, but I don't know why it stopped after the "jump".

I tripped a breaker the other day while carving a 24" sign, so I am aware of what has to be done.
Assuming it is not a two-sided carve, you will have to create at least one new mpc for the remaining carve.
If you have centerline text that is not at the top surface - that will require another mpc.
If you have a cut-path for the whole thing - that will require another mpc.

First, fix the problem with the brass-roller. Masking tape or rails and masking tape.
In Designer, save the original mpc to one with a similar name plus "fix" or something for the rest of the carve.
Copy it again for any other mpcs you might need.

In the first one, the "fix" one, create a rectangle over the part that has carved correctly and make it a carve-region.
Give it a depth of 0.000 and re-save it and load it on the card. It will start carving after that 0 region.
You will have to control where the bit touches the top-of-board when running all subsequent mpcs.

I'm not sure if the centerline text will carve correctly even if it is on the top surface, you would have to check the "fix" mpc.
In any other needed mpcs, just delete the parts not needed, like if there is a cut-out, delete everything except the cut-out.

If there is centerline text below the top surface, have it on the top surface in the mpc, but have the bit touch-down on the
actual surface that you want it to carve on.

My sign was two-sided where the breaker tripped on the back-side and then I got a z-axis stall on the centerline on the front.
I ended up with a total of six mpcs (plus the original two-sided) to complete it, but it came out fine.