5/15/22 Cutting Carbon Fiber

Colin Szeto

Broke a ⅛ bit today. This was due to the fact that I did not start the spindle after restarting the cut after I added in the holding screws onto the parts on the cutter. This may have also been due to drilling down onto a hole with a holding screw. 

After cutting all of the components the parts still need to be filled down as the slots were not far enough apart to allow the parts to free fit into place

This is the same story about the lengthwise vertical plates

Starting the cut on the top plate. The bit was unable to get all the way through the material. Although I vertically homed the spindle to the head I suspect that this problem was caused by not rehoming all axis in between the two cuts. 

Location of the rehoming button:

I then programmed in 1/16 more depth compared to the 1/32 that is usually added to the depth of the cut. This still did not resolve the issue. 

I then z referenced the probe onto the sacrificial board rather than the material. This was a risky maneuver yet worked as the spindle now cut 2mm (the thickness of the material) deeper from the surface of the material. 

I had to stop the second cut as the spindle was getting so hot that the PLA started to melt. I attempted to increase the clamping pressure by adding in duct tape but the heat still melted the adhesive of the duct tape.

Remedies to this may be checking if the correct pump was purchased and replacing. The material of PLA can be changed to ABS which has a greater melting temperature or even routing out a 3d aluminum clamp. 

I was struggling with tool changing without losing my place in the lines of gcode. 

I remedied this by duplicating the moves in the manufacturing workspace. I then deleted whatever moves were successful. This came in handy after I changed the 1/16 bit to ⅛. 

This also came in handy when all the holes were cut for the mid plate yet the contours still needed to be cut into the stock to release the parts from the stock.

The motor tube holes were a bit oblong on the back left corner. This was due to me attempting to change the lines of the g code to go back to redo some contour cuts.

This prompted me to just reprogram to tool paths.

Checking the tolerance all the holes line up between the mid and bottom plate. The slots are the only cutouts that are misaligned.