Finally a Carving

Finally had something come off of the MPCNC without totally messing up. (it’s been a while)

For those that haven’t read my other posts… I’ve been fighting oddities. I’m pretty sure all my oddities are with something I did stupid.

Today I took a few minutes to try and do a V-Carve using ESTLCam and just some silly text.

It worked… mostly. I have a weird cut coming off of one of the corners that wasn’t in the text or in the preview of ESTLCam, so not sure where it came from. The odd part of the cut is that the machine cut the rest of the text correctly… like this line is in the Gcode. I’ll have to dig through it to see if I can find it. If it was the machine catching on something, I wouldn’t expect the rest of the cut to come out correctly.

As with most things I do with the MPCNC… I’m working on throwing a quick video together of the text being cut. I started off at 10ipm and bumped it up to 300% shortly after the cut started. Like I said… I haven’t had anything come out correctly in quite some time and didn’t want to cut to fast.

I know this isn’t too exciting compared to a lot of other projects going on, but it did two things for me. 1) it validated that my machine is running OK 2) It put a little confidence back into me that I may be able to do something.

I hope to get some more time with the machine tomorrow. I need to just cut some stuff and make some sawdust.

I only used a 1/8" V-bit end mill on this carve. I should have used an end mill to pocket it and then finish with the V-bit, but baby steps. I also now realize I need a larger V-bit.

My wife and I agree this is actually a pretty ugly font.

I love it, the text very correctly displays the object of the cut. Now to add “smaller text” above and to the right. :slight_smile:

Oh. and while making this cut, I noticed that both of the tool mounts are broken on one side. it holds it enough that some zip ties held it in place, but I’ll need to print new ones.

Which sucks because I still haven’t fixed my 3d printer yet :frowning: The Micro swiss hot end is still jamming and I haven’t had a chance to mount it higher into the cooling block.

Is the error in the bottom of the x? Other than that it looks like a form of the Harry Potter text, or at least the “ing Letters” in the bottom left does. Carve looks fine otherwise. Great job.

Yeah. The bottom of the X isn’t supposed to go straight down like that

 

Here’s the video

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Great video. Very clear picture - did you use a phone or a camera?

Maybe the font is the problem. The little accents on the end of the letters around the time of the finishing pass were neat.

If it isn’t, the good news is the error happened early enough in the gcode to be isolated rather than much later.

Thanks for the compliment. The video was shot with a cheap $50 GoPro knock off I bought off of Amazon a few months ago. It’s cheap enough that I don’t mind using it in the shop.