Steve French

[Steve French]

Hey! Everyone I'm kinda new around here, I got my machine in Feb 07 but this is my first post. The problem I'm having is the patterns are not centered on th board on length. My board length is 3"x8" and the backgroung pattern is 2"x7" and no matter what I do to the program I want the machine to carve, it will always start carving about 5/16th of an inch from the outside of the board, it should start carving 1/2 inch from the outside of the board. the width settings seem to be ok although the machine sometimes asks me if I want to center the board on width. I have looked for anyone else having this problem in all the postings and I'm sorry if I missed any but this has been a problem every since I recieved the machine from sears. CW has had the machine twice because of bearing failure of the cutting head. I sure would like to know what I'm doing wrong. Anybody have any solutions.

[VtBlues]

Welcome aboard Steve. It is more of an art than a science to be sure. Not sure from your post exactly which dimension is giving you trouble. My first inclination is that your board is too short. You want the work to stay under the rollers for best operation and that requires about 3.5 to 4 inches on either end to allow for that. To do smaller pieces I believe most people are building sleds to hold the work and keep the machine happy. If you search on sleds you should find tons of posts on here to explain the process. You can always use a cutpath to cut the board back to whatever size and shape you want after the image is carved. Don't know if that helps or not but I'm sure others more knowledgeable will be on through the day that may be able to help more.

[Steve French]

Thanks, VTBlues I'm glad to be aboard, I think this machine is great
My boards are 3"x 8" box ends 3" x 11" box front & back should I make them 31/2" or 4" wide I think the lehgth is ok.

[VtBlues]

I believe the manual states that 2.5 inches is minimum width. If using autojigging you need and extra inch. So 3.5 should work. Never tried anything that narrow myself. I would suggest that you lay all the pieces out on a single board and have the machine cut out the individual pieces. Just give up 3.5 inches on the ends. That would take care of keeping everything under the rollers which is strongly recommended by people on here. Have you tried uploading this. Does the upload pattern check flag anything? It usually tells you if there is a problem and what it is?

[Kenm810]

This is a copy of a post on using a sled form 4 weeks ago. Sometimes the wood I use on a few of my projects is a little expensive and often in short supply, I really don’t want to waste 7” for each carved piece on a project. It just adds up to fast, so loading a piece of wood on a sled just large enough for one or two carvings helps to prevent wasting an entire board if I make a mistake. Remember the sled’s side rails and spacers must equal the thickness of your project, plus adding the thickness of the sled and board together the pressure rollers will see the sled and project as one piece.

I use the measurements of the sled and center the carving, sometimes I use the designer to draw a rectangle around the actual projects to remind me where the actual carving limits are. then remove the rectangles before saving and carving the project.

As per Simple.mpc file the over all board represents the sled, the three rectangles are the two fillers, project piece, and the two half inch lines at the top and bottom are your sleds side rails.
In this case you’ll want your machine to see the project as 9” x 20”
Attached Files

bear-ab [1].mpc

[Steve French]

Thanks VTBlues, No it uploads fine, I did however try a 15" long X 3" wide board and it carved it right. looks to me like I didn't read the manual good enough and I didn't read the postinsg right.now I can quit complaining and get to work.
Thanks again VTBules