Is It Me or my HD4 PRO
Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2019 7:08 pm
Hi Everyone,
I'm not an everyday CNC user. And I am entirely self taught. I have been making parts for about 2 years mostly out of Acrylic. When I started I understood there was a learning curve, and it taking me 4 to 6 times of building a piece to get it correct was part of that.
But now 2 years later, I still have to repeat make at least 75% of the pieces I try to make.
And I don't know now if it's me, my ability to understand, my unit, or my controller.
Here are my issues. My unit is out in the garage, when it gets hot in the summer time the controller freezes (bad choice of words) and it needs to be reset several times before playing nicely. Sometimes it freeze when loading the file, sometimes after the files runs, and of course sometimes mid run.
I am doing really simple things - cutting profiles and today a few pockets.
Here are the issues I had today:
1) Cut 2 Identical pieces of 24x10x1/4 abs (from the same full sheet) on each piece there are 3 2x3 pockets that are supposed to be .11" deep. First run cut fine. Second run the machine went nuts cut some other shape and then buried the bit into the table snapping the bit. It buried the bit in the middle of the table and there was nothing the gantry could have bumped into. The material is .245 thick, I was cutting a .245 depth on the profile and I have a piece of 5/8 MDF under the material. When the head buried into the table it slowly went from the .245 to the snapping of the bit over about 7 inches and it's a smooth depth increase - so clearly the controller was controlling the head down.
2) After I remade the second piece with no errors - I discover the pockets are 3 different depths. I pulled out my calipers and between the sample run (on mdf) and the 2 pieces out of ABS only 3 out of 9 pockets are the correct depth. The pocket bottoms are smooth an even cut. So the machine cut the entire 2"x3" pocket at the wrong depth.
I then cut 4 more pieces of just the profile with no pockets. These pieces are 24x10 by 1/4. Each piece was cut with 4 tabs to hold it in place and material was clamped and screwed down. 2 of the pieces on the long 24" cut aren't straight lines. What bothers me most about this is that I took 2 passes to cut the profile and both passes have the same error, but it's not in the code because the other pieces don't have the same "oops"
And now I have 6 pieces of material all cut using the same profile code to cut the shape. And yet none of them are the same size.
If I tell the machine to cut me 6 24x10 rectangles - shouldn't I get 6 identical rectangles, or maybe 5... But I cut 9 pieces of material today to get the 6 I need and the final 6 aren't the same size?
Is it me? Am I expecting too much from the unit? I mean I am not asking for .0001 tolerances from piece to piece - But some of my pieces are .25" different from one to the other. And the pocket cuts that were supposed to be .11" deep vary from .13 to .20 to .08
If it's me - don't worry about offending me... I just need to learn what it is I am doing wrong.
Thanks
Dave B
I'm not an everyday CNC user. And I am entirely self taught. I have been making parts for about 2 years mostly out of Acrylic. When I started I understood there was a learning curve, and it taking me 4 to 6 times of building a piece to get it correct was part of that.
But now 2 years later, I still have to repeat make at least 75% of the pieces I try to make.
And I don't know now if it's me, my ability to understand, my unit, or my controller.
Here are my issues. My unit is out in the garage, when it gets hot in the summer time the controller freezes (bad choice of words) and it needs to be reset several times before playing nicely. Sometimes it freeze when loading the file, sometimes after the files runs, and of course sometimes mid run.
I am doing really simple things - cutting profiles and today a few pockets.
Here are the issues I had today:
1) Cut 2 Identical pieces of 24x10x1/4 abs (from the same full sheet) on each piece there are 3 2x3 pockets that are supposed to be .11" deep. First run cut fine. Second run the machine went nuts cut some other shape and then buried the bit into the table snapping the bit. It buried the bit in the middle of the table and there was nothing the gantry could have bumped into. The material is .245 thick, I was cutting a .245 depth on the profile and I have a piece of 5/8 MDF under the material. When the head buried into the table it slowly went from the .245 to the snapping of the bit over about 7 inches and it's a smooth depth increase - so clearly the controller was controlling the head down.
2) After I remade the second piece with no errors - I discover the pockets are 3 different depths. I pulled out my calipers and between the sample run (on mdf) and the 2 pieces out of ABS only 3 out of 9 pockets are the correct depth. The pocket bottoms are smooth an even cut. So the machine cut the entire 2"x3" pocket at the wrong depth.
I then cut 4 more pieces of just the profile with no pockets. These pieces are 24x10 by 1/4. Each piece was cut with 4 tabs to hold it in place and material was clamped and screwed down. 2 of the pieces on the long 24" cut aren't straight lines. What bothers me most about this is that I took 2 passes to cut the profile and both passes have the same error, but it's not in the code because the other pieces don't have the same "oops"
And now I have 6 pieces of material all cut using the same profile code to cut the shape. And yet none of them are the same size.
If I tell the machine to cut me 6 24x10 rectangles - shouldn't I get 6 identical rectangles, or maybe 5... But I cut 9 pieces of material today to get the 6 I need and the final 6 aren't the same size?
Is it me? Am I expecting too much from the unit? I mean I am not asking for .0001 tolerances from piece to piece - But some of my pieces are .25" different from one to the other. And the pocket cuts that were supposed to be .11" deep vary from .13 to .20 to .08
If it's me - don't worry about offending me... I just need to learn what it is I am doing wrong.
Thanks
Dave B