First Big project - OOPS

[Proctorw]

I downloaded the Last Supper project. I thought I resized everything properly, well, it didn't work. I have posted a picture. I was excited watching the carving. but near the end of a 3 1/2 hour carve, I realized the "Routing" was incorrect. It thought it was a different size. I stopped before it cut. What should I have looked for with regards to the project. I have posted a picture of the final work and the MPC file. Any advice would be appreciated espsecially around resizing to fit a board that I have available. I am not too upset as I used Oak and knew ahead of time it wasn't the right type of wood. Thanks!

[bergerud]

It looks like the board stopped moving for the last two inches of the carve. Then the board went back too far for the cut out. Either the board slipped or you have a tooth missing on an x gear. The mpc looks fine to me.

[Proctorw]

It is a brand new Machine. Have to try it again. Looking at the MPC Is there a way to identify the cut path? or a Route Path?

[bergerud]

Under view - toolbars - check carving list. In the caring list, there are icons beside the objects which indicate the operations.

[fwharris]

To help board tracking run a strip of masking tape on the bottom edge of the board that goes over the brass wheel.

One thing I did notice in your mpc is your carving depth is at .650. That is hogging our a lot of wood and leaving you a very thin backing and possible warping. Try looking at it around .350. It might even shorten your carve time.

[lawrence]

One more thing- is the board perfectly flat/square and did you use masking tape on the bottom? I'm curious if the piece may not have had good contact with the roller the whole way

Oak can also move (a lot) when you remove wood from one side only. There can be a lot of compression trapped in the wood that gets released and this could have caused the wood to bow dramatically as it got routed. I'm just thinking out loud here, certainly not saying that's definitely the problem.

Lawrence

[Proctorw]

Thanks. I didn't know to check board depth. After digging into the mpc, I found that there were 3 overlays (for lack of a better term). A cutting one, the one with the Disciples and the one with some edges. I had shrunk the original down by about 2 inches. I just made the corrections, shrunk it more (to fit some wood I had) and I am cutting it now. I wish I would have checked the carving depth, oh well, I am a newbie, didn't know what to check. I have to figure out how to show the "Overlays". Not sure what you call them. I could take a screen shot and show you what I am talking about. It looks like one is for cutting, one is for routing and the other is the "Picture".

[Digitalwoodshop]

I always try to design my projects using a longer physical board so the board always stays under the rollers and STABLE. Once the board pops out from one roller bad things can happed like the board loosing contact with the brass roller... That is always a BAD THING... Check out Tips and Tricks for more tips.

[Proctorw]

I just finished my second one. Came out perfect. As I described earlier, it wasn't the board or the rollers, but rather me resizing the project. This was a Last Supper project I picked up off of this forum. When I resized it, the routing/cutting frame didn't resize. I played around with it before I did this one, much smaller and it came out fine. There must be some type of Layer view or something to check. Anyway, I figured it out.

Thanks for all the input.

[bergerud]

Are you are you saying that you changed that mpc before carving it and that those changes caused the problems? If so, ok (but no fair!). If, on the other hand, the mpc you posted was the one you carved to get the result in the picture, then you are not out of the woods yet!