YZ Plates Advice

Hey guys, My LR2 doesn’t have the endstops installed, and I’ve yet to hook up my touch plate 3 years later lol… So I was just wondering, is there an easy way to do the 1/16" holes on the LR3 YZ Plates, and then come back and do the cut outs and regular CNC work without messing up an expensive piece of Birch hardwood (not ply, it’s solid Birch)?

If so, could someone walk me through the process? I’m thinking it’s just don’t move anything in between jobs, and it should all line up, but that seems to be such a critical part for accuracy, I’d hate to mess it up. And I only have just enough Birch left to cut these 2 plates. One screw up, and I’ll have to buy more, and jeez it’s $100 a sheet of solid birch.

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This is what I would do:

  1. Start your machine against some hard stops. The stops need to start it square and at a specific XY position.
  2. Jog to a 0,0 that isn’t going to be milled away. Write down what X,Y you are using before you reset the coordinates to zero.
  3. Do one tool’s worth. On the small holes, you only need to mark them. Drilling through can be done on a drill press.
  4. Keep the machine powered on and the motors enabled while you change your bits.
  5. If you managed to keep the X,Y through the bit change, reset your Z zero and go to town. If you lost X,Y, then try again from your hard stops and the number you wrote down in step 2.
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Oh that’s brilliant and easy to follow, thank you Jeffe!

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