Fab Academy at AS220 Labs

August 14, 2010 11:08 AM

Unsuccessful Modela Troubleshooting - Partially Successful Switch to Roland Vinyl Cutter

by Anna Kaziunas France

I wish that I could relate tips for troubleshooting the Modela milling machine in this post - but I have hit a brick wall. (However, I recommend you try the steps below if you are troubleshooting your own milling machine.) My boards have been milling extremely hairy for weeks - punctuated by a workable board or two out of 50 or so milled.

I have tried:

  • changing the bit
  • changing / tightening the set screws
  • moving the position of the spindle (from high to low - low to high)
  • scraping the bed with razorblades to ensure that the boards are level (we accumulate tape and glue on the bed sometimes).
  • moving the position of the copper to be milled on the bed (sometimes this helps and but I can not replicate the same results in the same place twice.)
  • I have tried using different batches of whatever copper stock we have left in the lab.
  • I read the manual - no real help there - mostly Modela specific software tips.
  • I tried booting into Windows (we usually run the machine using Ubuntu) to see if there was a “recalibration” or “troubleshooting” program or setting in the Modela software - I couldn’t find anything to run that was machine based.

When I first began using the Modela back in January - I often had these types of problems, but as I became better acquainted with the machine, the boards came out better overall, with an occasional hairy board. However, in the last few weeks I mill almost exclusively mangled boards with the occasional usable board being produced.

As I am completely out of time - I thought I would try to cut my remaining infrared prototype boards for my final project / networking on the vinyl cutter out of flexible copper sheets. The boards are very tiny - I am not sure I can get them off off the sticky background without destroying them. I cut many multiples to use as spare parts for when parts get torn. Hopefully this will work and I can finish my projects.

vinyl

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