First attempt at a project: proof read twice, engrave once

[stever]

I finished my carve king build not too long ago. After carving a few scrap 2x4s I decided to try something bigger. I saw a flag decal a few days ago that I wanted to carve and I had a piece of 20" x 36" x 3/4" glued spruce board laying around from another project. Although it was time consuming, I split the carve into three nc files to make the flag big enough to cover the length of the board. The carving is roughly 17" x 33". If this were being given to someone I would trim the excess wood, but I'm just leaving it the way it is. It was more so for test purposes. The finish is not stain, I burned the wood with a torch. It gives a good contrast to the grains and there's no dry time. I used a 90 degree V-bit, I will probably use a 60 degree bit next time. Designed in Inkscape and engraved in Easel.

As for the negatives:

-If you read the subject, you get the hint. Two spelling errors. "securtiy" and "consitution".... I need to type slower, but more importantly, proof read what I'm typing.

-I am having issues leveling the deck of my machine. I used a dial indicator attached to the router mount and the deck seems wavy, is it because it is MDF or am I doing something wrong? I am thinking that I may have tightened most of the machine screws up pretty tight and might have not torqued down on some. I am thinking about upgrading to starboard soon, seems like a no brainer for me because my machine is out in my shop.  Regardless, you can see some of the engraved

letters are lighter than others in a certain section of the photos.         - Steve

[Mototech]

You need a constant to measure against. Meaning if you attach the indicator to your motor mount you don't have a perfectly flat and level constant. For the machine bed may not be perfectly flat and level and your motor mount may change location in the z axis due to the x and y axis not being perfect.

Myself and many others level the spoil board by creating and running a program that takes off a few thousandths of an inch with a large flat bit. I use a 1" bit made for spoil board leveling. This method gets you pretty close to the spoil board being the same distance on the z axis from the bit.

I was careful and followed the instructions closely when assembling my carve king. And I don't use my machine for any close tolerance machining. So the spoil board leveling procedure works fine in my case. But if plan to do any tight tolerance stuff, tramming the router then surfacing the spoil board will get you really close to perfect cuts if your feeds and speeds don't cause any bit deflection.

marklindsaycnc.com/index.php/2017/11/08/tramming-router-gatton-cnc/

[Mototech]

And I want to add, your piece came out really nice. I'd be very proud of that for being one of your first or hundredth projects. Assuming you had to shift the material location between programs, and that's something I haven't attempted yet. So big props, sweet project😎

[stever]

Thanks for the compliment. Yeah shifting the material is what I had to do. I like using Fusion360 but it just seemed easier to shift the material in easel.

Thank you for all the info on the spoil board and the link. I will have to try that. Right now I do not have a spoil board.

I can’t say enough about how good this forum is and the customer service that comes with the machine.

[Derek the Admin]

Cool project bud. The misspelling is a heart breaker but I bet you would be about the only person that will notice. We are always more critical of our own work.

I agree with mototech about surfacing a spoil board.

[stever]

May 9, 2018 3:44:09 GMT Derek the Admin said:

Cool project bud. The misspelling is a heart breaker but I bet you would be about the only person that will notice. We are always more critical of our own work.

I agree with mototech about surfacing a spoil board.

Thanks Derek. Yeah it definitely was a heart breaker especially after everything else that could have gone wrong with shifting the material around. But that’s an easy mistake I’ll learn from. I guess my next project will be to surface a spoil board.

[Bruce]

Great work for a first try. How did you split the tool pathing and shift the work piece to the zero reference in the Carve King?

[stever]

May 9, 2018 14:10:41 GMT Bruce said:

Great work for a first try. How did you split the tool pathing and shift the work piece to the zero reference in the Carve King?

I’ll try to explain it the best I can without pictures because I’m not in front of my computer. These are the steps I took to split the job up:
1. Create an svg file and make sure everything in the file is “un grouped”.
2. Open easel and setup your work area to be the same as your carve king work area (I set my work area as 430mm x 430mm)
3. Import the svg file, stretch or expand it to the height and width that you’d like (your max height would be 432mm, length can be however large your table is that your carve king is sitting on)
4. I believe easel defaults to the front left of the machine, leave it that way.
5. In easel, I put the left side of the flag about 5mm away from the edge of my work area, I then deleted every word that did not fully spell out inside of the work area. So there were 50 stars and some words under the stars.
6. Select generate g-code.
7. Save nc file as flag part 1
8. Exit out of that g-code screen back to your svg file, start clicking “undo delete” until your entire drawing is back.
9. Select all of the objects, then move them left until the next set of words that can be carved fully are in the easel work area. I did this by holding the mouse down and clicking the left arrow on the keyboard, this keeps your drawing from moving up or down while you are trying to move it left. It is time consuming because it moves slow, but it will ensure that all your words are in a straight line.
10. Position your work (in easel) so that one of the letters or stars that you have already saved in part 1 ends up falling directly on your -x edge so that you can have a reference point when it comes time to carve your second portion of your job.
11. Delete every word that is not fully spelled out in the work area and the words that have been previously saved in part 1.
12. Repeat step 6, save nc file as flag part 2, repeat steps 8 and 9.
13. Repeat step 10, except you will now be doing part 3 and referencing off of part 2.
14. Set up your work piece on the carve king, move the router to the front left. I moved it as close to the front left as I could, then backed off 1mm +x and 1mm +y. Then zero your x and y. Then perform your steps for zeroing your z. You are now ready to carve flag part 1
15. Move your work piece to the left until your reference letter (from step10) is on the -x edge of the carve king work area. Begin carving flag part 2.
16. Repeat step 15 for part 3.

If this is not making sense please let me know. It’s a lot easier for me to understand cause I’ve already done it, but I’m not sure if I’m describing it well enough.

[Derek the Admin]

Thanks for providing the detailed documentation stever. That's what this community is all about.

[Bruce]

Thanks for the detailed run down of the steps. I haven't tried using Easel. I'm guessing if the figure carved into the work piece was all one large object, then a whole different approach would be required?

[stever]

May 11, 2018 12:56:13 GMT Bruce said:

Thanks for the detailed run down of the steps. I haven't tried using Easel. I'm guessing if the figure carved into the work piece was all one large object, then a whole different approach would be required?

That would be a little more difficult. You would need a pretty exact point to reference off of, then that point would have to be moved to the -x edge of the work area. It can be done but words are easier because they are split up. I guess if you had a square end of a drawing or something well defined like that you could use that as the reference point for your second, third, etc. portion of the carve.
You would also have to split your drawing up in the design phase and have the two points meet. They would have to be ungrouped from each other.