Making grid in spoilboard problem

Okay I think I’m beginning to understand this better now I had to adjust my toolpath settings in mach 4 to see it better for one thing… So correct me if I’m wrong in the photo this shows my homing position and the position of the spoil board so this distance between the too is what’s throwing it off?.. If that’s true should I have installed it there instead?.. I can move it out…

No, don’t worry where your spindle center is. The AVID’s can usually cut a little past the front of the machine just because the way the spindle is mounted etc.

Here is a video that explains hardstops, homing, and soft limits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhqPia1p884

In a nutshell, you home so that mach 4 can know where the X, Y, and Z extreme positions (Zero) are on one end of their travel. Then in your machine configuration, there are limits set for the other end of that travel (these are just based on math since you know the size of your machine).

Now Mach4 knows exactly how far to alllow the machine to trave before it will slam into the end, those are called soft limits. They are nice because Mach4 can look ahead on those and it will prevent you from going off the end either with jogging (it will just stop if you try to go further), or in a tool path. If in a toolpath, it will give you that error you saw in your history window telling you that there is a line of Gcode that is telling the machine to go further than it can, so its stopping.

Your workpeice could be bigger than your machine, or you could have simply set your work coordinates (manually or with the touchplate) in a place on the machine where it can’t complete the job. For example, if you try to cut a 5x5 square on a 4x4 machine, there is no place on there that you can cut it, you will always get that error. However, you can cut a 2x2 square on that machine, AS LONG AS the whole 2x2 is within the 4x4. People (or at least me) usually make the mistake at the far end of the Y axis because there is 14 extra inches back there that you can’t cut on, but its not visually obvious when you place a long board on the machine that it is violating that space However, you can see it on the toolpath window in Mach4 easily after you set your Zeros and load the toolpath. Its also convenient to draw a line on the back of your spoilboard so you don’t spend a bunch of time clamping down your material on that 14" no cut zone, only to find out after looking at the toolpath that you mounted it too far back.

1 Like

Success!!! Thank you guys!! :blush: that video is Excellent very informative I wish I would have seen it earlier in my build…

2 Likes

Do you know there are 14 extra inches on the back end of the table?

Yes that’s a no fly zone! What I mean is do to the size of the gantry and the position of the spindle nothing can be cut there…