Router Repairs

June 12: Router Repairs

I’ve learned a very valuable lesson: When you configure something, write the settings down in a book somewhere. Sometimes that computer crashes and all that configuration data gets lost. That the issue with my CNC router. When I order it to make a 1” square, the square is 1.1” wide. This is fine for little artsy signs and things, but it sucks for actual work where everything needs to fit. I use this CNC router, mostly, for cutting circles and drilling hole patterns. It’s important to get those right.

There is a complicated math problem that allows a person to figure out the steps per inch for this machine. It involves the steps per revolution on the motor, the number of teeth of the drive gear and the number of teeth per inch on the belt. I could figure this out, but instead, I just ran the calibration routine on the Mach3 software.

Basically, that involves telling the machine to move, say, 10 inches, and then measuring the resultant move and telling the machine how far it went. It’s probably more accurate to do it the math way, but there’s nothing I make out of wood that needs levels of detail that can’t be seen without magnification.

I’ve used this machine for so many things. Just having it available to do a quick cut comes in handy when I’m running around multitasking. I mostly use it for cutting 2D shapes and drilling hole patterns, but it can carve really nice contours, too. Now that it’s back up and running, I’ll be using it quite a bit.