Parallel Digi-sign Routing Made Easy

Parallel digi sign routing

hi i'm garrett with idc woodcraft and thank you for coming to this video where i'm going to show you how to properly set your tool on your cnc router not only your tool height but your side to side position two so you can get dead nuts on the corner of a part to set your zero point so let's go out to the router and i'll show you how that's done the technique i'm going to be showing you is going to show you how to set the zero point where the tip of this tool is zeroed out on the top surface of this board and then i'm going to show you how to find the exact corner location where the center of the shaft will be zeroed over that so your absolute start point will be the very corner of that and it'll be very accurate now if you know the paper method for setting your z you can skip ahead to the time stamp down below because that's what i'm going to start with now before i start this can be done on any cnc router this is a bob's cnc e4 router i enjoy this router immensely so if you're brand new to cnc i recommend this machine and also you may want to subscribe to this channel because i teach cnc for beginners i teach viv carve for beginners and i teach cnc entrepreneurialism if you want to make money with your cnc machine i'm going to be working in a software that looks like this it's called universal g-code center as far as you're concerned it doesn't matter which software you're using the cam software that stands for computer-aided machining basically the computer is driving the cnc router it doesn't matter what software you're working in it'll have all the features i'm showing you so let's get started i'm going to move my computer into position and we're going to teach you how to do this now before we get started we're going to do this in a very simple way there's a lot of methods out there there's a paper method which is the most common where you just touch the tool on the paper which is what you're going to learn here there's tool probes touch sensors corner sensors you don't need any of that all you need to do is know what i'm about to teach you so we're going to start off with the paper method teach you how to just set this zero point on the top of the surface and then we're gonna get to the sides so i'm gonna go into the software here and forgive my lighting my overhead light has burnt out so i have to work with what i've got and that's the way it goes okay so we are in the universal g-code sender and there's three areas i want you to take note of the first is your xyz locations so these are also buttons and when you press those buttons it'll zero out that bigger number and just so you know that smaller number is the machine home position or the very back corner of the machine over here we don't care about that number we want to get these numbers to zero in the proper location the second thing i want you to know is just take a look here at this g21 code g21 means you're working in millimeters g20 means you're working in inches i always work in inches my programs generate in g20 uh but here i'm going to manually enter it in so if you're using universal g-code sender you're probably going to be doing the same thing if it says if you work in inches and it says g20 you're in good shape the next area i want you to see is just this command line down here this is where you're going to be manually entering in some information and over here are your jog buttons so you have your x plus and x minus y plus and y minus and the last area i want you to see is down here this is where you manually enter your step distances or the jog distances we are going to be using the jog function and that's what these buttons are here the jog means we're just going to be moving the machine around manually so what this is doing right now you see i'm setting inches and the feed rate or the speed at which it's going to move anytime i hit one of these buttons will be 100 inches per minute it says step rate of x and y so moving around the machine like that x this is be x that way and that would be y the distance would be one inch right now until i change that the z is set separately right now i have it at a 0.5 of an inch so you want those separate controls your controller is going to have that okay with that long-winded explanation let's get started so the first thing i'm going to do is i want to change my z to a 0.01 now if you use universal g code center make sure you type in the zero point and whatever you're gonna put after that put the number before the decimal point because otherwise it does funny stuff and what that's gonna do now is anytime i hit the z button right here the machine is only going to move [Music] a point zero one of an inch just like that now one of the nice things about universal g-code centers if you hold the z down it's going to jog a quarter of an inch so that's exactly what i'm going to do i'm going to hold it down for just a moment while it makes this first jog okay and i know that i got more than a quarter of an inch here i got probably more than half an inch i'm going to do it again you see i got a good shadow here so i know how far away i am and i can come down one more click there we go and now what we're going to do is we're just going to take that piece of paper take a thin piece of paper and set it underneath and just start tapping the z and you see i'm moving 0.1 of an inch each time i tap it and we're going to do it until that paper stops moving sometimes you have to be patient okay feel it grabbing now paper stuck so what i'm gonna do is now zero my z so watch that number when i push this button that's gonna go to zero so now the end of my tool is set on top of my material here so z is good to go and this is the point with which if you know this you're going to be picking up on this on the time stamp so now i'm going to hold the z up button once so it's going to come up a point two five or a quarter inch and that's more like a point two i'll find out exactly what that's moving now i'm gonna move it over this way minus y direction so the tool comes past the edge of the part so minus y and i am set at one inch and i'm gonna come over a little bit more so what i did was i was hitting this button right here okay and so i'm gonna move it back and now what i want to do is come down in z so that the tool goes down past this surface there and we're going to come down one more notch so z is about a little over a quarter of an inch past the surface here so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to start bringing the tool over this way i'll be spinning the tool by hand and i'm just going to be nudging it over until i can't spin it anymore until i just feel it touch the material so in order to do that i've got to turn that step right down right here that one inch if i hit that right now it's going to move over one inch it's going to run into the material and break that 30 dollar tool so we're going to just change that to a 0.0 1. now why we'll do the same thing as z did if you hold it down it's going to bump over or what a point two or something like that so let's go ahead and take care of that and i can go one more okay so let's get some light on there so you can see a little bit better so now i'm just going to start tapping the y in and you see it's starting to move and i'm just going to just keep doing that now see it's getting close and there it touched now we're going to back it up just a little bit one click and see if it turns now i can still feel it just touching so that's perfect that's exactly what we want and we are going to now set our y at zero okay so we are now going to bump our y out we're going to go y minus and we're going to go x minus until it goes behind the back part there so i'm gonna do one more and then i'm gonna go y plus because i want it to get in behind the part right over there all right so let's see if i can reposition my camera so you see what i'm doing i'm going to do the exact same thing um except in this case i'm going to be hitting x plus right here until it touches now if you remember the xy step was already set to 0.01 so because i'm blind right now i can't actually see it i'm just going to keep tweaking it in until it gets there so i'm hitting x plus x plus is that way towards the part okay i can't feel it rubbing but i can hear it rubbing so we are there so now what i'm gonna do is zero out my x now we're gonna bring the z up above this surface here so we just come in and touch z and it's above okay excellent so this tool is a one-quarter inch diameter tool and we have set it an eighth of an inch off that way and an eighth of an inch off the back which means the corner is an eighth of an inch back that way so what we're going to do is we're going to tell the machine to move to the proper position like this we're going to manually enter the data right here is g21 i want to change that to g20 all you have to do is type into the command line g2 0 if you put your cursor into it g2 0. all right not g2 and the letter zero g2 and the number zero now watch the g21 now change to inches that's exactly what i wanted to do now the next thing i wanted to do is i wanted to go to its zero position not the one we're going to have but the one we preset so you can see exactly where it's at so all i'm going to do is type in i want to make sure i have a g90 here g90 means i'm working in absolute coordinates i'm not going to explain any more or not just make sure you have g90 and here you're going to type in g0 g stereo says you are making a rapid move as opposed to a feed rate x 0 and y 0. and we're going to hit enter and here she goes and now you can see that the edge of the tool is at the edge of the material there and the edge of the tool is at the edge of the material there so we need to bring it this way let me point the right way we need to bring it this way an eighth of an inch and we need to take it that way an eighth of an inch really easy so first of all you see we are at zero because we typed that in right now we don't we want that to be a positive number that's saying that we're above the surface of the material so what we're going to do is we're just going to tell the machine to move in a positive direction in x and y by an eighth of an inch so we're gonna type in x point one two five make sure i type that in right move my my mouse out of the way and y point one two five and when i hit go it's gonna wrap it or hit enter it's gonna wrap it over to that position just like that and now the center line of the tool is directly over the center line of that corner there and you see it says .125 all we have to do is zero that out and zero that out and we have now set our tool to the top surface and from the bottom of the tool and the center line of the tool is at the center line of that corner there so you are at the exact dead nuts start point for this job i hope that made sense to you if it did give me a thumbs up and maybe a comment uh don't forget to subscribe if you are brand new to cnc i teach you all the basics to get you up there up and running really fast i've got a lot of cnc in my background i teach entrepreneurialism and take a look down below there's a bunch of links for you to check out to get you started in your cnc journey all right this is garrett with idc woodcraft and i will talk to you next time