I opened it in Repetier-Host, homed x & y and set the V-bit touching the board, disconnected and reconnected Repetier so x,y,z all show zero. The first part of my gcode is:
Just realized the stupid mistake I made. I turned the board 90 degrees from the direction I intended too. There are too many things for an old man to remember.
I started over with a new board and it seemed to be going right this time although it seemed to be cutting a little deep. Then my V-bit broke. I accidentally put 1mm instead of 0.1mm for the cutting depth. Now I have to order a new bit and wait for that!
Here is my first attempt at engraving text. The work piece is 60mm x 325mm. I’m using the V-bit with these settings: Tool Diameter 0.10, Depth Per Pass 1.0mm, Plunge Angle 90, Feed Rate 20.0mm/s, Plunge Feed Rate 0.2mm/s. 24000rpm. Cutting depth is set at 0.3mm. Its taking a really long time, partly because instead of engraving a whole word it will engrave one letter, then move way across the board and engrave another letter then back again. I don’t understand how to make it engrave whole words at a time. What causes it to skip all over the board rather than doing everything in order. I don’t understand how Estlcam arranges the cutting order or if there is a way to adjust it. Also, after it engraves letters it comes back and pokes at them and I don’t understand why its doing this. Is this some kind of finishing pass?
I was happy with the final result. This was just a test piece. It took an hour and 40 minutes which seems way to long for a 0.3mm cut. Maybe someone can tell me how to make some adjustments to shorten the time.
Hmm, I’m not familiar with estlcam, but it sounds like it may have been cutting each depth separately… like several 2d pockets ending at assorted depths, instead of 3d toolpaths. So the tool would have to lift, move, drop into the next spot, finishing a ‘layer’, then dropping down to dot off here and there for the last layer. This would explain jumping back and forth cutting each character more than once… and also why it would take so long because it’s doing step downs and doesn’t have to.
I use f360, which has an operation called “engrave”, where you select just the top edges of the letters, and it makes 3d toolpaths to cut them out. The result is the bit plows through each part in one shot, changing depth as it goes to keep the desired shape of the top edge. This way the cut goes very quick and clean… I figure like 10-15min for something like you have there. Maybe estlcam has a similar feature?
Now, that missing 2 in the 250K? …ugh, also a line through the E on extend and extended. Are those spots where the sheet has a dip? Hard to see in the photo. If so, even with something like bCNC that would take a really dense grid of probing points to zero out. My guess though is it’s not the material… probably just some mechanical bumps here and there… bearing hurdling over a chunk of junk on the tubes… z screw snagging on a greasy spot… cat jumping off the gantry in the middle of those characters being cut. It doesn’t take much to mess up engravings, and those spots are too random for me to say anything more conclusive based on photos.
edit: Also saw your question almost a month ago… yes bCNC will work with a RAMBo v1.4 controller, but only if it is running grbl firmware. Unfortunately bCNC is meant for grbl, and does not support marlinfw. This is another item to motivate folks to use grbl instead.
