Cut path with Sled

[carrothers]

I am trying to cut this half inch pattern out using a sled. On the virtual board I put the depth at half inch (sled is1.5 inches). the machine goes thru it's checks and hits the slide plate ok...then over to the near side and does it's depth check and then goes back past the sled and tries to take a depth check where the holder plate slides up against the sled. I get various error messages..."is the holder plate in place?"..."Z axis stall"...manually key in the height, etc. The bit never checks the actual wood on the sled or the board in the sled. Here is the mpc...any help would be appreciated.

[bergerud]

What you describe does not fit with my experience of what should happen.

After the bit touches at the bit plate, it bobs beside the board on the keypad side and then goes for the touch on the board. After the touch on the board, it should bob at the hole in the sliding plate and then try and touch the sliding plate. When it cannot touch at the sliding plate (after three tries since it is too far down to touch), it stops and asks if the sliding plate is in place. You answer yes and then it asks for the board thickness. Key in 1/2 and away it should go.

[carrothers]

Thanks...that helps tremendously. I did get the question "manually put in the board thickness" and I was putting in 1.5 for the sled. I will try the .5 and see. Maybe that will fix my Z axis stall when it trys to find the sliding plate. In a close reading of Michaels Tips #12 I see that I could simply use a scrap board underneath my half inch board and not fool with doing a "carve region" type sled. This forum is full of great ideas.

[carrothers]

OK, I'm making progress but still getting Z axis stall right after it says "starting routing"...it goes to a position to start carving and then gives me the error message. I think it's something in how I laid out the pattern. I imported the ptn file and placed it on the board. I did an outline the pattern. Then cut path and then went back and deleted the pattern. At one point in the design when I left the outline on and tried to load the mpc file to the card it said it was a three hour carve which I knew was wrong. (I'm only cutting out the outlines)..I went back and deleted the outlines and it is now a 16 minute carve which seems right. I must be doing something wrong to get the Z axis stall. Any help would be appreciated.

[carrothers]

btw. here is the other piece to this project if anyone wants to try it. It's a quarter inch "sandwich" which goes between the two half inch pieces. When glued up with a couple of small half inch spacers it becomes a small truck that you can put some small Christmas trees in and carve something in the door about it being a Christmas tree delivery truck with your name or whatever.

82580

[carrothers]

btw. here is the other piece to this project if anyone wants to try it. It's a quarter inch "sandwich" which goes between the two half inch pieces. When glued up with a couple of small half inch spacers it becomes a small truck that you can put some small Christmas trees in and carve something in the door about it being a Christmas tree delivery truck with your name or whatever.

82580

[carrothers]

82581

here is a picture of one of the trucks finished....it's a great Christmas gift for friends and family.

[bergerud]

I do not think getting a stall as the cutting begins could have anything to do with the mpc. Do you have DC? Does the cut motor start? Maybe the right cover switch is not closed.

(Looking at the mpc, I wonder if you might want to flip the outside cutouts?)

[Mugsowner]

Have you checked your z motor encoder disc for movement. That little demon can be cause issues there seems no reason for.