A bad day on the old X-Carve

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Today I was able to get my table put together, and got it mostly set up. The screws I had were too short for the wood I got for the enclosure, but that is another issue.

So, I started out by screwing down a sacrificial board, and carving a lot of it flat…but I centered on the absolute center and forgot to account for the offset in the spindle and carriage, so I had to cut it short when it hit the y+ limit. That actually turned out to be pretty decent since my work piece fit almost exactly in that Y distance.

First carve went ok for flattening, but Red Oak is apparently pretty tough. Chatter was an issue.

Second carve, milling out the top, and cutting the edges went great. When I loaded the g-code into UGS to carve some details, I started jogging the position with mm. I completely forgot to change it back to inches. I still haven’t been able to suss out why this works. It seems like mm would make it move less, but the bit immediately drove straight down through the center of the work piece, and I went wildly yanking things out of the wall. The bit won…man was it ugly. Luckily no damage done.

Try 3…surely this will be the one. Well, it carved, but my stupid butt put the wrong bit in for the second stage v-Carving, and I ended up with a nice carve that is just way too wide.

I’ve spent the evening going through my files, and will do a few test carves tomorrow before finishing this. I just wish there was something to blame other than my boneheadedness.

You guys ever just have one of those days?

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Oh yes… I’ve found that the trick is if you have more than two hose-ups in a row, just put it down and walk away, it ain’t getting ANY better. The machinists at work have a specific term for that. “Chuckit in the fukkit bucket”. lol

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@BradT sounds like my normal day makin’ sawdust.

My best day, was driving my VBit into some Jarrah (very hard Aussie wood) which bent the spindle shaft, broke off the collet, pulled the bottom V Wheels off and was the final indignation that killed the original spindle (photos in the forums here somewhere).

Thankfully, the level of excitement has abated somewhat of late, although some multi bit, multi path jobs still have a bit of a ‘pucker factor’.

But that’s how we get experience (I think).

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