Using natural-edged board

**pqkenai** · 07-30-2014

I mainly do signs, with a lot of natural-edge board, so I need a sled, for the tracking roller to read. All I need, though, is a flat piece of timber.

I mount the board on the left-hand, nearest side of the sled [as it lies on the bench in front of me], with the straightest of the two edges of the board nearest to me. I adjust it till it looks straight, with the part of the board that sticks out the most, right on the edge of the sled, & screw it down [right at the ends]. Then I measure the narrowest part of the TOP surface of the board & set that as my width in “Board Settings”. The machine only begins to read the width when it encounters the top of the sloping edge, & then stops reading when the slope falls away again.

However, unless you position the board in the machine so that it reads that narrowest part, you will have different width readings in the designer & the machine-read width. You get round this by choosing “center width on board”, when loading the sled & board.

In “Board Settings”, the thickness, of course, has to include the sled.

Load the board & sled as it sat on the bench: board to the left, & closest to you.

This works about 80% of the time. Occasionally, an error message goes off while loading the board, usually “Clear Board Sensor”. I think this is when the sensor has to travel too far to get to the top edge of the board [anything over about an inch], so it loses the plot. A possible solution just occurred to me: run the board through the machine to where the “bulge” in the board that comes closest to you will be read by the sensor; but I haven’t tried this.

Anyone else got any comments?

**Mikewiz** · 07-30-2014

You can try running masking tape across the top on the width of the sled where it measures. It may help fool the machine.

**CW-HAL9000** · 07-30-2014

I do rounds and ovals with the bark still on them. I set them on a melamine sled with 3.5 inch 3/4 inch ends. Then I run masking tape on each side so the machine thinks its a square board. The rounds are milled to 3/4 inch so they are an even thickness and I dont have to deal with any bulge. They work great. I mark the center and then use jog to center for location of where to carve the pattern.