Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Skew is gone, Maybe

Had to get away, go have a nice meal and come back with a fresh set of eyes.


Seems I had forgotten to fasten the right pressure roller spring after having it off to gain better access to the stepper motor.


Also, the front right roller had slipped down and was not where it belongs.


After correcting these two items, I ran a sheet of MDF thru the tracking code (air cuts) and it returned precisely where it started with the bit going perfectly back into the 1/32" hole it originated from.


Finally, at last, I have gotten the skew out... or have I.


Next, I put in a sheet of 3/4" foam board I often use for testing and as a sacrificial board for carrying balsa.


Ran the same test and observed about 1/16" of skew and not returning quite back to home.


The nice thing about using MDF is that it is stable. It rides on top of the rollers, has little or no drag when it traverses back and forth and gives a more true representation of any tracking problems.  The downside is that in bigger sheets, it is much heavier and requires a good support table for longer lengths.  But if it tracks straight, I can see where this could be the answer for cutting the 36" lengths of Balsa that need to track perfectly.



It is getting late, I am tired, but I have some limited success so I will leave it at that for now and come back tomorrow to do some more exhaustive testing.  I need to try a sheet of 1/4" FFF to see how it compares with the MDF in regards to tracking.


No comments:

Post a Comment