Z Axis Can't Keep Up

[pcshelley]

     I'm starting to get pretty frustrated with my new AR8 Pro. I purchased it as an upgrade to my Shapeoko 3XXL just over a week ago. So far, I've barely been able to run any vcarves at anything faster that 70IPM or the Z axis slips and the bit drops into the work piece. This machine is marketed as an industrial CNC machine, but it can't even compete with my SO3 in cut speed. I was regularly running my SO3 at 100IPM and greater during vcarves and 3D carves. The 30% decrease in cut speed is only made worse by the fact that the machine's work speed is even slower. I'm taking double the amount of time to carve things on a machine that's 9x the price. I've checked the coupler, I lubricate the machine daily, I insure the bit is firmly in the collet, and I keep my fast speeds below 1500mm/min, which is ridiculously slow for a machine that's marketed at 200IPM. I will say the rigidity is awesome, and this thing was tuned up right out of the box, but I need something that can handle my current workload, which this thing has only made worse recently. Does anyone have a fix for this? I've played with max speeds, work speeds, etc, nothing has worked.

[aluomala]

I find it odd that you can't run over 70IPM. I run at 125IPM (finishing pass with a 1/32" bit) all the time (with a AR4+ Pro). Could probably go faster, but I'm OK with that speed.

I would suspect that you need to do a factory reset. I imagine the chances of you getting any help this weekend (from Axiom) are slim to none, being a holiday weekend. I hope you get it up and running, because once you do, you will be happy. I went from SO2 to NWA Pirahna (junk) to the Axiom, and the only real issue I had was the coupler on the Z-axis breaking fairly early in the life of my machine (I've had it since Feb of this year, and I think it broke in the first month or so). I bought 5 couplers from eBay while I was waiting for my machine to arrive (it took about 8 weeks...) since I had read that it's a fairly common occurence. I haven't had any issues since that (the coolant water had some weird "growth" in it, but nothing that was a show stopper). I am thinking about getting an Elite machine already (some of my project runtimes are in the 12+ hour timeframe, so I can only do one thing at a time). Not a lot of competition in this price range (Laguna iQ series maybe), so I think I'll stick with Axiom.

Allan

[supernat]

I had a similar issue with mine right out of the box. Z Axis would bind, then drop into the material. I discovered that it was due to VCarve creating Z Axis Moves instead of Plunges. I have a post somewhere in the forums about it, might be over in the Vectric forums though. I boiled the problem down to one particular move in which the Z Axis flew up really fast, and I knew it shouldn't do that. In the VCarve software, I saw a blue line for the movement instead of green lines like every other plunge. I don't know for certain, my memory is fuzzy. I also had an issue where there was an upper cap on the Z Axis, something like 40 units. If the Z tried to move higher than 40, the controller limited the movement, but still maintained that the movement occurred, dropping the bit down into the material yet again. I have another post on that somewhere as well. Funny enough, not funny ruined my piece, I had the much too fast X/Y motion again last night. This time, had nothing to do with plunging. I was 95% done with a full day run, and one last movement to create some triangles. As the triangles got smaller, the unit ran faster, can't say why. It definitely blew out the 70 IPM I had programmed. Then got off and gouged through the middle of my 30" work of art.

I would consider Vectric to be the first issue at hand. Although I would really like to understand the Axiom controller better. This thing should stop run away IPMs that it can't support. I don't understand why it doesn't limit them. And if there's an option in there, who knows where it is. There's no manual.