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i see the schematic in David's CNC thread.. i am digging the colored wire traces.

CorelDraw all the way!

Your schematic is neat, organized, and I can see why you understand what it means; it's logical.

 

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i could do away with one large spoilboard

I'm not certain that is a good thing. Having a single spoilboard that can be surfaced for a known level and coplanar surface is a good thing. You can mount your workpiece anywhere and know that it is on a reference surface.

 

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i had assumed that the table was a reference surface, but perhaps you are correct, that machining a reference surface is best.

Trust me; I'm correct. Even a new sheet of MDF isn't really flat. When I change out my spoilboard, which I've only done twice in 6 years, the first thing I do is surface it.

It's always interesting to see that even on a very light skim cut there are peaks and valleys on what appeared to be a flat surface. I surface the spoilboard every few months and I'm in a climate controlled environment. If you're not then you may have to surface the spoilboard every other week, it just depends on how much the humidity swings in your CNC area.

 

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up-cut... should have been down-cut, or compression

That doesn't look thick enough for a compression bit. Yes, downcut would probably better.

If you shoot video please make it widescreen and not portrait.

 

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the carousel disk, as drawn, has 12 tool pockets

For me it would be switching between 2 or 3 cutters for 90% of the work I do on the CNC.

I like the idea of a carousel but it seems like you would have timing issues to make certain the proper bit is in the proper location for switching (i.e. more to go wrong than a rack type).

 

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Nice, Travis. Why so slow cutting, though? I know you're just cutting air and testing but you'll be cutting faster than that, right?

 

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Unless the file is huge you might be able to do a find/replace command in your text editor to bump the rapids rate up a bit.

 

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but i don't know about the 1/8" solid-carbide bit

I have my doubts that a 1/8" bit will cut through 3/4" ply in one pass. Also, if you go too slow you won't be making chips, you'll be making dust and likely charred dust, at that.

 

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The CAM setup is context sensitive and changes with the cut profile. Here are two different profiles and the step-down settings I used on a couple of jobs.

 

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not sure how to fix that.

Right click on your setup and choose Edit. From there you should see 9 circles (there are actually 27 but I typically set Z zero in the center of the work piece). Choose where you want to set your Z zero. The Edit opens to the Setup tab but you may have to click on Stock and back to Setup to see the 9 circles. I always use the nomenclature of zt for Z zero on top and zs for Z zero on the spoilboard. My file names also include that so I can see at a glance where to set Z zero when I load the job. No mistakes this way.

Here's one I did with Z zero on the spoilboard -

And this one has Z zero on top of the work piece -