Clean Vectors; Bad V Carve

[sevans]

Does anyone have any advice to offer about this. Just started recently. Many thanks! -Sarah Evans
http://i1171.photobucket.com/albums/r542/sfordevans/A.jpg

[ken_rychlik]

looks like clean vcarve, bad material surface

[paul_z]

Sarah,

Can you post the file? If it's too big, delete the toolpaths and post just the design.

I think some of the problem is the surface of the material; however, there also appear to be lines formed on the sides of the "A". This can happen if the "A" is a set of vectors and not text. (Text can be converted to vectors using the Convert Obect to Vectors tool.)

You can also get a lot of nodes if you converted a bit map image of the text to vectors using the Fit Vectors to Bitmap tool. That approach will almost guarentee lines on the sides.

Paul Z

[sevans]

This is an Aspire file. How do I upload that

[paul_z]

Sarah,

Email it to me. My address is in my profile information.

Paul Z

[robtown]

Have you done any maintenance to the machine recently? If not, should you?

I've had similar situations:

Once, it was because I had just done some 3d carving and HDU dust had clung to the rails in the gear tracks and the pinion gears were "bouncing" over the gobs of HDU globs.

Once, I had just put new pinion gears on the machine and one of them was not tightened enough so it was slipping a hair on direction changes.

Once, it was because someone had changed the tolerance setting in the software when creating the toolpaths.

[sevans]

Yesterday I pulled all motors. The Y motor set screws were very loose. I tightened them down, put motors back on, greased the machine, and surfaced the table. I then ran more tests on the same letter. I noted that whenever the letter is grooved on the y axis, the cut is bad. The same letter when turned down the x axis cut great. Note, this is High Density Urethane I'm cutting. Any thoughts on this?

[paul_z]

What kind of machine do you have?

[sevans]

PRS-Standard. About 4 years old. Spindle. 4X8

[paul_z]

The only time I can remember something like that happening to me was after a shopbot software crash. The shopbot.ini file got updated with bad values. As a result, my machine would jerk when moving on the X axis but was smooth (normal) when moving on the Y axis.

You might want to copy the text in the ini file and post it here. I have a PRT Alpha so I don't know what the PRS values should be but someone here will know. You might also check the properties of the ini file and see when it was last written. If it was updated in the last few days, that may be where your problem is hiding.

Paul Z

[garyc]

Sarah...
Check and adjust the V rollers on the bottom of the YZ car and on the Z.

[sevans]

Okay. I have 2 files. One from February and one from May. Should there be 2? I'm trying to attache txt files to this but have never done it before so I'll see what happens.

[sevans]

Gary, The Rollers look fine to me. There's nothing wierd there. What should I be looking for?

[sevans]

It seems like it's kind of jerky on the Y axis when running V Groove files.

[robtown]

Do you have one Y motor?

Maybe disengage the y motor and push the gantry back and forth by hand and see if it's binding?

Does the Y motor make any wierd sounds when it runs?

Swap your Y and one of the X motors (make sure you have the same motors for X and Y, AND that you choose the X motor that is wired correctly), then run the file and see what transpires.

Possibly hook that Y up to the extra driver, if the PRS has an extra driver.

These are all things I'd look at.

[paul_z]

Sarah,

The VR line controls acceleration and looks normal (as far as I can tell); however, did you make any changes in machine settings that would have caused an update to this file? If not, why did the file get updated virtually the same time as your problems started.

If you look around in the shopbot folder you should find a subfolder named settings (if I remember correctly). There are default files for each type of machine. It might be worth the time to see if your ini file differs from the default for your machine.

Paul Z

[garyc]

Sarah...
The V rollers on the bottom of the YZ car need to be adjusted occasionally. Same goes for those on the Z. I like to check them by placing a screwdriver between the Y car and the extrusion and pry the car away from the extrusion to see if there is any movement.

There a couple different models of PRS (my assumption of your machine), each has its own instructions. There is a section in the PRS assembly manual that shows how to accomplish this.

[paul_z]

Sarah,

Did you get this sorted out and, if so, what was it?

Paul Z