what method do you use to know you are in the center?
Once you start up up your Maslow and hit apply tension, the machine should go to the center automatically. If I really wanted my board at the center, I’d probably make a big X on it using pencil or tape, from corner to corner, and then slide the center of the x to the location of the bit just after startup.
To be honest though, for my workflow at least, Its much more important that the plywood is parallel to the X axis rather than centered. To check that, I jog down so that the bottom of the sled lines up with the bottom of the plywood. Then jog right or left about 4 ft to check that the edges still line up.
If anyone else has any good tricks for this, I’d love to hear them.
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As @anna mentioned, the machine will center itself automatically. The two sticking points I’ve seen from there are: 1) Getting your spoil board centered. 2) Centering the material on your spoil board to do a cut. Of the two, the second is most important, and also, in my opinion, the easier one to solve.
My method for solving 2 (i.e., centering the material) is, after you have your spoil board firmly in place, go to your CAM/CAD software and draw out a reasonably-sized grid with lines at every half inch to inch, and slightly wider or more prominent lines on the central X and Y axes (the lines don’t need to be very thick so 1/8" bit works well and they don’t need to be deep either). Make sure that the starting position for the design is the center of the grid. Run the cut on the spoil board. Assuming your spoil board doesn’t shift around later, you should now have a nice grid to line up your material against. Using this method actually makes centering the spoil board itself less necessary since the grid will be drawn at the machine’s center regardless.
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I like the idea of putting an x on the material I hadn’t thought of that, and is that x axis test a regular test or just one before a project?
That’s a brilliant system, I’ll definitely try that
Only before a project. Usually I put tape on the ground to mark where the best location is, but sometimes I change it slightly between projects, so I like to confirm.
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