Why is it so frickin' hard to just put a piece of wood into the machine, allow for 3.5" to stay under the rollers, jog to start position, center on width, and hit CARVE ?
I really don't give a flying you-know-what about how long my board is- I don't care to center on length, I just want to throw a 12" carving on the first end of it. WHY is that so frickin' impossible? For instance, I sometimes like to carve on rough-sawn lumber for effect, but the tracking sensor REALLY busting my cojones with the rough surface trying to measure the length I don't care about !! And YES, I know all about crisping up the tracking edge and masking the surface for the board sensor. (I know it works for width measurements) I'd LOVE to just continue feeding the same board (any board) into the machine, adding, then removing, carvings to/from it as I work from one end to the other, WITHOUT having to go through all the rigamarole before carving (width measurement and finding surface are fine). In other words: how can I just measure width, find bit-to-wood touch location, center on width, jog to the cutting start end, and CUT ?
I DON"T CARE how long my board is, where center length is, or how 'precise' my tracking is. (it never has measured accurately, anyway)
I just want to load a board, load a piece, carve it, remove it from the board, and go on to the next.
BTW: I'm on an EARLY Sears Compucarve, running 1.184, and I keep it well maintained.

I WOULD say that I'm frustrated beyond words- but I guess I'm NOT, based on the above.