I mounted my M4 vertically. I’ve used the same spindle as @md8n.
I was cutting a simple shape - an ellipse 300x400mm with a 3mm bit. The piece that I was cutting was close to the centre point and so not towards the extremes.
As you can see from the attached photo, the corner closest to an anchor point didn’t cut as deeply as the others. I could get round this by pushing the sled down a bit when it was in this area.
Does my sled need more weight?
@md8n do you have this problem and is your frame vertical or horizontal?
P.s. @bar I’ve had a look but didn’t find anything. Do you have any tip page about how to place a gcode cut. I tried moving the sled and seeing the home and then reloading the gcode but it felt very hit and miss.
I mounted my M4 vertically. I’ve used the same spindle as @md8n.
I was cutting a simple shape - an ellipse 300x400mm with a 3mm bit. The piece that I was cutting was close to the centre point and so not towards the extremes.
As you can see from the attached photo, the corner closest to an anchor point didn’t cut as deeply as the others. I could get round this by pushing the sled down a bit when it was in this area.
Does my sled need more weight?
probably, we’ve also had people report tht tilting the machine back more helps.
The suggested angle was based on the original maslow, focused on being back far
enough to let the bit cut into the workpiece rather than push the sled away from
the workpiece. But the weight distribution of the M4 is very different than the
earlier machines.
P.s. @bar I’ve had a look but didn’t find anything. Do you have any tip page about how to place a gcode cut. I tried moving the sled and seeing the home and then reloading the gcode but it felt very hit and miss.
jogging to a spot and setting that as home should be all that you need to do.
you should not need to reload the gcode.
the biggest problem people have is keeping track of what ‘home’ means for a
particular gcode file. sometimes it’s the bottom left, sometimes it’s the
center, etc. It all depends on what was set in the CAM step.
I used krabzCAM and it’s surprisingly good.
Better once I realised that you have to manually add your own tabs.
What really helps is to use the hotkey ‘e’.
That sets the entry point where the gcode starts.
I need to look and see how to add a path that automatically moves the sled away from the cut when done.
Mine is verticalish. Also as @dlang mentioned I wuld make sure that it is not too vertical. I’ve recently modified my frame to be at around 21 degrees, when it was 17 degrees, and there’s a noticable improvement
Mine isn’t that vertical. It was used for an M2 but I can’t recall at what angle it’s at.
I don’t think that I can easily incline it any more.
If I have to make major adjustments, I’ll just cut my losses and make a horizontal frame. I’m sick of having to rehang it every time anyway.
