So went to home depot to pick up some 1/8 hardboard for struts. Grabbed from the 1/8th rack, took it to get cut to manageable size and find out at check its really 3/16th (got 50% off) Was planning to laminate it for 1/4th. Will 3/8th be too thick for struts. Should i just plane it to 1/4?
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from my understanding if you want 1/4 struts you have to reprint all your supports bc they only do up to 1/8. its pretty tight clearance when the core moves over. somome did a remix for 1/4 on this forum. doug something I think.
From the documentation:
The Three Strut plates were designed to be up to 6.35mm (¼“) thick. Hardboard or any similarly rigid materials work best here.
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6.35mm is a tight fit. If you get some M5 screws that are a bit flatter than the ones included in my kit you can go a bit thicker, then the belt and endstop start to get really close.
You should be able to mock it up and do a few really quick tests to double-check.
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You plan things. Plans get postponed and when you come back to it you realize you skipped a step or failed to account for the change. Needing to cut my struts and I am wanting to know if there is a way to manually tile a project or more so how to do it. I know some CAM software has it but typically behind a pay wall from what I see. I would assume it may be as simple as using dowels for markers. Making 2 seperate vector layers and when creating the gcode do 2 seperate tool paths cut the 1st tool path adjust then cut the 2nd tool path. Or if i did 1 tool path add a M0 believe that is the pause code to account for the transition and proceed that way. This may be the correct concept but I have no idea how to implement it.
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I did post it somewhere before because I did it as well, let me check.
Found it:
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That is a lot less complicated then what I did lol. Here I am trying to calculate where it stops cutting, where to place dowel for moving, how to do the gcode. And here comes a much simpler way. Thank You!!!
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So decided to play around with the gcode and test with a sharpe 1st. The flipping method seems a lot less complicated but i figured as that would not alway apply to the project I would still need to test other ways. As seen in the photos above I created 3 separate gcodes. The 1st gcode being the 1st photo with larger strut section, 2nd one being the tiled section/smaller strut, and the 3rd being all 3 as one file. I then took the ending of the 1st gcode and start of the 2nd gcode and with the combined gcode added a pause code. I then tested this with a sharpe. Besides the sharpe raising up due to the pressure and not properly drawing it worked as I hoped. Also think i didn’t properly code the dowels but figured as long as they are cut can adjust as needed.
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I highly suggest cutting one at a time. That way you can make any adjustments to your CAD between each cut.
Looks like you missed melting the ends of the wire loom with a lighter. Bummer.
Will do boss. And yea I spent some time rewiring and after the hassle just never melted that end but did the others lol.
Attempting to cut my struts as advise I am cutting them one at a time and I ended up just doing a temporary extention of my Y to cut the full struts as tiling was giving me issues but now running into spacing issues. Using the Svg download from calculator which is 1424 file. Scales fine in Estl and preview cut looks fine. Test cut on the other hand not so great. Looking through forum as sure someone else has had this problem but searching with key words not really getting me and answer. Can someone direct me? Thank you.
fyi: I am comparing this based on the docs photo of how the finished struts should look.
Your sharpe plots look good. If you use a sharpe does it still plot correctly after extending Y?
The dreaded loose grub screws? I messed up my first set, I had stepper rotational distance incorrectly set.
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Will test and report back. Thanks for the advice.
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Can you fit one diagonally all in one cut?
Tiling is something I have never done, it can be complicated. I never expected a new CNC user to build the X wider than the Y so I do not have an easy solution if it does not fit in one piece diagonally.
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I can with the temporary extention of my Y and original plan is full 4x8 build just due to moving soon and other constraints decided to settle for just a 4x4 ish build but didn’t account for cutting struts. I figured out how to do the tiling even without having the actual program just essentially take the separate tool paths and when combining them as one gcode find the end of the 1st tool path and the start of the 2nd tool path and insert a M0. Took a lot of open notepads and using the edit tool to find codes that didnt repeat but where only at the start to ensure it was the right placement but the “find” tool is a great help with this. I’m sure I’ll get it figured out just got a bit frustrated but I’m brand new to cnc to woodworking to being creative and thinking outside the box so have to give myself some leeway.
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Absolutely.
Normally I would suggest not editing the Gcode directly to do it. I would set up two cuts in CAM, using locating pins. That requires editing your SVG, cutting in half or at least adding the locating pins (at least 2, 3 is probably better for a large sheet like this.
You know you could use the LR without the strut plates until you move. It will be much slower but should work just fine in the end.
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Dowel holes, as Ryan sugggested. Sorry for pushing this again, but that’s what you need. 
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Sorry, I’m confused. Are you cutting with the extended Y in one go or back to tiling again?
Trying in one go. Haven’t been able to go back out there and run some test. Also considering trying to cut inside the vector instead of along, well at least for the main shapes as that shouldn’t affect anything right?
