Last night I made my first decent item on my C-Beam. It was just a coaster with a dog print in the middle. Turned out great. Today I went to make some more. The only different was the thickness of the wood I wanted to use. 8mm think, not 10.5mm. I went into Fision 360 to make the modifications to my sketch to make the extrude 8 mm instead of 10.5mm. And ensured the paw print was extruded -1 mm on the top face. Model looked just as I wanted it. I then sent into Manufacture to regenerate my tool path because of the thinner stock. Reposted the code. There's just two operations. An Adaptive cut to cut the paw print 1 mm, then a Contour cut to cut around the perimeter of the coaster. Loaded the gcode oin Openbuild control, set my zero and hit run. Here's the problem. It sent my ruoter bit straight through my work piece, through the 1/2" MDF scrape board, through the underlying 1/2" MDF table board, and down to the aluminum table. It would have gone straight through that too and down through the lead screw, my bench top and straight on through to China if I hadn't stopped the job. It brock my 1/4" bit, pulled the MDF boards off the aluminum table, and torked my Z axis carriage. What the heck happened? I looked at all my settings. I can see anything that's changed. Like I said, all I did was change the thickness of my material by editing the extrusions in the sketch. Stock offset was left at 1 mm above the peice, the default. I thought maybe Z got reversed somehow, but homing takes Z to the top like it should and z moves like it should using the controls. Afraid to try again because I don't want to wreck my machine. Any ideas what went wrong and what I need to fix?
1) Do you have limit switches? 2) Is homing correctly configured? 3) Did you remember to Home? Fusion post uses Machine coordinates so homing is critical
Yes, I have limit switches. Homing works just as it should. Z goes to the top and hits the limit switch at top when it homes. I did zero to center point of my piece, hovering over center just enough to slip a piece of paper under. As I mentioned the only thing I changed in Fusion 360 was the extrusions to account for 8mm thick stock verses the 10.5 mm stock I used for the piece last night.
With the successful job last night the C-bean didin't go to Home before it started the job. It started from the center point of the piece which is place center of the work space.
It's up to you to Home everytime the machine starts, or lost position. Homings sets up the Work coordinates and refreshes the offsets of Work and other coordinates. SetZero tells the machine where the Stock is. Up to the operator to perform both appropriately.
Maybe that's what did it. I didn't go to Home before I started today. I didn't go Home first right after I powered the machine, so it had no idea where it's coordinates are. Probably thought Home was were I last left it positioned when I shut it down and powered back up this morning. Thanks, I'll give that a try.
Correct, it would. People without limit switches used that trick to "fake a home" - but you have switches, so better to do the proper thing and home.
That was it. Not sure how I missed something so fundamental with all that I read and tutorials I watched. But thank you so much for getting me straightened out.
