I am having trouble cutting small objects. Since you have to put whatever material you are cutting in the lower left part of the carvey (so that the carvey can home itself) are you not able to cut anything in the complete bottom left? For example, say I wanted to carve something like the coaster in the picture, is there any way to do this?
@ChristopherFarrar I haven’t tried it yet, but I am planning on trying to solve that same problem by placing a piece of the same stock material under the smart clamp and securing my actual material to be carved somewhere else on the wasteboard. I’ll update here when I try it.
I was thinking the same exact thing. Most of the wood I am using varies in thickness so I was thinking about using a firm piece of clay to use as the “stock piece” to go under the smart clamp. That way you can just change the thickness of the clay instead of having to cut a new piece every time you work on a new project. I have some double sided tape that I was going to use later to see if it was strong enough to hold a piece being carved.
Clay is definitely not something I have any skill with. But scrap wood I have plenty of. Double sided tape is a pretty tried & true method for workholding. I’ve used carpet tape with success on my home built machine, but the clamps on the Carvey have been great. I like double sided tape when tabs aren’t the best solution. I’d love to hear how your project turns out.
I used double sided tape and it worked great. I was making coasters so I had multiple pieces of the same thickness material do I didn’t use the clay. I placed the dummy coaster under the smart clamp, changed the dimensions of the wood to 12x8 (so that the carvey thinks there is a full piece of wood) and placed the coaster to be carved in the top left of the waste board with double sided tape . Then i used the circle template in easel and positioned it in the top left (so it was matched with the actual coaster on the waste board). I then imported the logo I wanted to carve, centered it on the circle in easel , and deleted the circle so carvey only carved the logo. Clicked carve and had a large /centered logo that I wouldn’t have been able to get if I used the smart clamp.
Excellent! Did you trust the grid lines on the wasteboard to place your stock material or did you measure?
Also, what type of tape did you use? I, along with others, will find that info helpful.
Thanks for the update!
Yea the grid lines actually were pretty accurate. I was using coasters cut from a log so they weren’t exact circles , but I adjusted the circle on easle to get the dimensions close to the actual coaster. Tonight I want to try it with a perfect circle and see how accurate the grid lines are, but what I’m doing doesn’t require exact precision. Definitely good enough for a first try though! The tape I used was “Duck Brand 240200 Double-Sided Duct Tape, 1.4-Inch by 12-Yards, Single Roll”. Like $6 on amazon and you don’t need a lot. I was actually able to reuse 1 piece 2-3 times.
Thanks for the info. I wish the grid lines in Easel had the gift spacing that the wasteboard does. 
Same!
Any chance you can just cut a ‘dock’ for under the home pin from a piece of the same wood and just use the board pins to hold it in place?
May also be handy to keep a range of docks from the wood you use for similar situations.