Y was off by 1/4"

Today I was working on a project with my dad. He just wanted a simple pocket made in a board so I was using the wood base that came with it. I had the pocket centered on the material in v-carve but for some reason the it ended up off by a 1/4" down on the x-axis. Is this something that I need to align on the base/jigg or is there something in the software I should check or adjust? Sorry for all the questions lately but I am finally firing it up and enjoying seeing it in action, most of the time...

Not a problem! I'm glad you're asking the questions here, on the forum--so that other people can learn from your experience with the tool!

So--how are you lining up the handibot on your material? By that I mean--how do you know where you're expecting the pocket to be cut? If you set the handibot up for a cut and send the bit to the bottom, left-hand corner of your pocket...(you can find this by examining the vector in VCarve--if you click the "move" function and choose "absolute" and select the corner as your datum--the current position will be the location of that bottom left hand corner...or you can just hover over the corner and the rough location will be displayed at the bottom of the window)...so when you send the bit to this bottom, left-hand corner location--is it going where you expect? Is it already off by that 1/4" you're seeing after you cut?

If so--then you can fix that offset by:
1. Moving the handibot itself (difficult to do perfectly)
2. Moving the home location of the handibot (quick to do--but then your cut area is reduced)
3. Moving the vector that you're pocketing in VCarve (left or right, up or down by 1/4"...this might be the easiest to do)

Make sense? For example--I was doing some wood inlay for a Christmas gift last week--one of the inlays cracked after I had take the material out of the tool. So I set the machine up again on the wood--homed the tool--then manually move it until the cutter was aligned with a corner of the inlay. I went into VCarve and moved my shape around until that same corner was in the exact same spot in my design--toolpathed it, and recut the pocket for the inlay and repaired it. That was a lot easier than trying to move the material around to match my existing cut file.

Brian

yes thanks that does make sense. I am in another project now and having some issues where its not cutting where I expect. No real damage except wasted materail/time. For the first project with my dad I mentioned we were using the sign making jig(not sure what the term is) that came with it where you put the cnc on top and then you can slide the planks under it. The plank he was using was not the full width of the slot allowed in the jig so I clamped it down to the bottom of the Y axis which left an inch or two on the top. I can get some pics if it helps.

Is it possible to save a tool movement just to trace the outer edge of what I am cutting while its still above the material/not cutting to see if its in the right spot and adjust? I tried doing it today with a cut depth of 0 but with that it dragged the big across the piece which I would rather not do. Can I just change the Z-axis temporarily to keep it above it or is there a better way short of shimming the handibot up a bit?

I got it all out tonight and got it working and centered properly. Not sure what my problem was last time. This was also my first time trying out tiling. It became obvious fairly quick that I need to figure out some other type of way to clamp the material down to make it easier/faster to move the tiles. I was thinking if I mounted the handibot down to the tile/sign jigg that with some wedges that I could probably make it secure enough but easy to move but wanted to see what you recommended?