CNC Shark Forum

Hi, I have had my HD3 for a few months now and surprisingly have been able to get it carving and have been moving along nicely with projects. The Shark HD3 says that it has a z travel of 7". I want to engrave on the front edge of a wood tray. Standing upright, this piece has a depth of 7" exactly. With the Z all the way up, I have just enough room to get the shark touch plate between the bit and the top surface of the wood and am able to run "Detect Touch Plate" and its does so without a problem. I am wanting to run 2 toolpaths, a simple Pocket and a simple Profile. The depth of these toolpaths are only 0.04. When I start run the job the bit drills down very far into the wood, at which time I of course stop the program.

I have searched around to try to find the answer and the concern I see with engraving into such thick stock is not having a bit long enough to accommodate. In my situation, I only need to go 0.04 into the wood so the bit certainly can do the job. Any thoughts or insight as to why it is behaving this way would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a bunch!

While the Shark HD 3.0 does have 7" of Z travel, the upper Z limit is a major factor in your application. It is very possible that after the touch plate is used to zero the Z axis, the router is returning to it's safe height and running into the upper Z limit of the machine. This will cause a loss in position and the machine will not operate properly. Keep an eye on the bearings of the Z axis during and directly following the detect touch plate step, if the bearings touch the upper part of their slide rail, you can expect that the run will not be successful. If the safe height setting is causing this limit issue, the setting can be edited in the Preference section of the Shark control panel.

Thank you very much. I went into preferences and it will not let me adjust the safe height below .50. I do not have any clamps to risk running into because all clamping is done down at the metal table. I wonder if there is anyway to disable the safe height if that is in fact causing the issue. I really really would love to be able to engrave on these and it seems like the machine certainly is capable of doing it...

Do you think maybe I can seat my router in a higher position?

Seating my router higher worked. Thanks so much for the response! I am a total newbie here so still trying to feel my way through this. Thanks again.