Easel/Carvey - pausing and then resuming is off

Easel
1

I just went to carve a 4" x 2.6" plate I designed for a fix-it project I’m working on. I designed the file in Illustrator, then imported the SVG into Easel. I selected the outer shape, and changed the path to make an outer cut. I was cutting acrylic, and used a standard light gray upcut bit.

When I went to carve, it made a first pass, and it seemed ok, but then on the second pass, it carved a wider outer cut, so I paused it (using the pause button on the front:

second pass
second pass2851×2138 2.62 MB

In the image you can see that it’s carving another pass at the outside, making it wider. (that gap there is for a tab, it carved a little more, and then I paused it)

So my first question is, why does it take Easel 2 passes to carve the outer edge/cut? It should have only been one!

So I paused the carve to take a look at things, and I decided to continue on. In Easel I clicked the “unpause” button and the carve continued. It seemed to start off OK, but didn’t travel all the way to the right, and then preceded to go up:

second pass (after pause)
second pass (after pause)4032×3024 1.76 MB

It was too much, and and I ended up breaking my 1/8" upcut bit!!

2

How thick is your acrylic? What depth of cut setting?

3

Can you share the Easel project?
In addition to the questions @MarkA.Bachman asked, what is your feedrate?

4

Zoom in tight on your design, I think you have a open loop somewhere.
Sharing the Easel page (publicly) will help us check aswell.

5

Sorry it’s taken so long to reply back (was swamped at work and now busy w/the holidays).

The original file is gone - I heavily modified it after reporting the initial issues. I recreated the design and published it to Log In | Inventables. Two things to note however:

  1. When I first created the design, the bit carved the outer perimeter twice (both in the simulated preview, as well as in the actual carve). When I went to try and reproduce this, I wasn’t able to repro it.

  2. I think the main issue is that when I paused the carve (using the button on the front) and then resumed the carve (clicking the play/resume button in Easel), the carving bit started off in the wrong direction - almost as if the home location had gotten corrupted (I did not move the bed myself). I haven’t tried to reproduce this, so I have no idea if it was a fluke or not.

As far as settings go, the acrylic was 0.128" thick. I set the material in Easel to cast acrylic, and the bit to 1/8" upcut. I didn’t check the settings, but I just looked and the setting Easel sets are:
feed rate: 40"/min
plunge rate: 12"/min
depth per pas: 0.03"/min