UCCNC & no jog...

Nope, maybe the board was not straight of shifted a bit. Next week I will try different boards and shapes. Maybe it will solve on its own.

It looks like it has moved during the job...

/Mika

What is your tool parameters. It might be that you have very large value for the stepover, or perhaps the feed rate is too fast, or pass depth too deep. All those parameters do require some tuning, and you need to change those depending on the material and bit you are using.

Too fast feed rate or too big pass depth will cause the machine to loose step or get stuck, but on the other hand too slow feed rate will make it so that bit does not cut properly anymore.

Too small stepover will make it slow, and too big makes the bottom uneven. Also if your bit is too much out from the collet that will cause vibrations, which will also make the bottom uneven.

I have been using following parameters for soft wood (pine) for my 2-flute 3mm fish tail downcut end mill: Diameter 3mm, Pass Depth 3mm, Stepover 1.2mm (40%), Spindle speed 18000 rpm, Feed rate 40 mm/s, Plunge Rate 20 mm/s.

Ah, and looking at the edge of the piece, it looks you have upcut end mill. Downcut endmills will push the chips in to the material, which will make the top edge of the cut cleaner. Also I do not see any tabs to hold the piece in place when you finally cut it out, and this might have caused it to move after it got loose, and then bit might have cut the extra bit I can see there.

So i found the settings and set it just like you said (still very fast in my opinion). But i found a new problem (or the same was before), it doesn't do straight corners. I had started the job twice that is way there are two lines... But as you can see the corners are off, and also not the same.

how are you clamping the piece?

Your feed rate is definitely too high - you loose steps! Depends on your machine...
Try the same with slower feed rate

I clamp the wood with the supplied iron bars. But have not found the perfect clamp method for thicker wood jet.

I used the settings from this post:
Spindle speed 18000 rpm, Feed rate 40 mm/s, Plunge Rate 20 mm/s.

This I set in cut2d along with the mill. Or do I also need to change settings in uccnc? I have the stepcraft 840 version 2

40 mm/s = 2.4 m/min!

That's a lot, reduce it 16 mm/s (1m/min) and try again. And adjust the plunge rate too. For example: 10mm/s.

It worked, that did the trick! First time it got stuck half way and shifted... But that is maybe the wood or my essembly.

I'm pleased with the first result.

Good you got that working.

As I said in my post earlier, I have used the 40 mm/s = 2400mm/min speed when cutting soft wood and that do work for me for 3mm 2flute end mill up to 3 mm deep cuts for X-axis. That speed is fast, but properly tuned SC machine should be able to do that. I do have HF500, not sure if that makes any difference.

Also for Y-axis my machine have some issues, so I have limited the speed in Y-axis in UCCNC to 1000mm/min (=16mm/s) just to make sure it does not loose steps. I.e. my machine will sometimes loose steps in Y-axis direction if I go faster then 1500mm/min speeds, even without any load (just jogging in UCCNC). For X-axis direction I can run it 5000mm/min speeds without any problems (although I have limited the speed to the suggested 3000mm/min there too). Just to be sure I do not ruin works before I have time to really check why the Y-axis is loosing steps on faster speed, I have been running it slow. In quite often the major cuts are along X-axis so it does not slow down the cutting that much.

In my last work I found out that in certain location on my Y-axis it lost steps even with that reduced speed, and it seemed to do that several times in about same location, so I guess there might be something wrong with the rails or something, but I just moved the workpiece to different location and managed to get everything working again.

Still need to take the machine apart to check the Y-axis, but doing that is quite a bit of work, so I have not yet found time for it.

Anyways if your material is harder you do want to reduce the speeds. Same if you are using different bits. On my 6mm end mill I do use the 1000mm/min = 16mm/s speed, and on aluminum I used 240mm/min = 4mm/s for the same 3mm bit.

You need to experiment with the suitable feed rates for the machine, material and bit, and I suggest you keep record which settings worked for you, so you can later check it to get suitable parameters if you change something.

So what your syaing is we cant use the default profile with the stepccraft machines? I'm finding my Series-2 D840 stepcraft profile lacking in so many ways, and also very buggy... I would love to switch over to the non stepcraft tampered UCCNC but I dont know why it wont Jog.. is there any way to fix that?

my typical problems are simple...
1) often the software wont let me reset because it thinks the limit switches y-,x-, and z- are triggered... (which they arent and eachc time i even unplug them and replug them in to make sure there isnt a shortage.
2) my z axis likes to home in the wrong direction, heading right for a suidical plunge towards the machine bed..

I contacted stepcraft about this, and no answeres or help. So as a friend of mine suggested, turn to the forums!

These problems arent consistent, they happen maybe once out of every 4 or 5 times that I run the machine. which is often enough to make it almost not worth using the machine because ill spend a few hours trouble shooting only to have zero luck and somehow magically the next day it decides to behave...

Any ideas?

Thanks,
John