Chatter Marks on Cutting
 

Took the MM beast for a drive today and ran some cuts and noticed that i am experiencing chatter on the cutting of rounded edges on the board.

- I am using a Makita Router
- 6mm 2 Flute Straight Cutter
- 12mm MDF
- 2500mm per minute feed rate
- Using a 4:1 Gear Reduction Setup
- Straight cuts in both X + Y are perfect

Funny thing is that the board i am cutting is four sided and the chatter marks appears on only 3 of the 4 corners.

Is this a router issue or is the feed rate too high?

May be - one or more of the V roller on your Z is loose

It's all tight

I am suspecting that after inspecting the 4 corners, all have various levels of chatter from none to worse which leads me to believe my tabs came loose and where not thick enough.

Any are thoughts on the causes i can check?

Hi maybe 3 corners are made of a bunch of small lines and one is an arc.

I checked that also, that was one of the first things i learnt about CAM and vectors and always ensure i convert to ARC or BEZIER.

What is you micro stepping setup?
What is your Mach3 speed and acceleration?
What is the length of the cutter?
Did you cut in one pass ?

Kobus, 3 passes . . . see the marks

Try the first two passes in climb mode and the final in conventional and it will help some.

If it is not segments in your design, it has to be a little slop in the machine somewhere.

Kenneth

Update...
 

After making some noise today and adjusting the thickness and quantity of tabs i concluded that the chatter marks are due to the parts vibrating while cutting and nothing attributed to issues of mechanical nature (Thank Goodness!)

I thickened the tabs to 5mm and she cuts like a laser on the corners now.

To paraphrase Gerald...."The MechMate build is a passing phase, you will have a life time of Toolpathes and CAD / CAM to deal with for the rest of your life"

Anyway, congrats on getting your machine to cut! :)

Congratulations. Wow...the machine builds just keep coming. Funny how that happens. :)