CNC Shark Forum

The results were mixed - encouraging, but not good. And sometimes frightening. Light cuts, in the .015-.025" range, tend to be the rule to the non-rigid nature of the machine. Sticking with smaller end mills, 3/16 to 1/4, is strongly advised. Solid carbide is a must for stiffness, and also for the ...

My Shark Pro has done this, but it hasn't happened in a long time. It happended a few times randomly, but then it happened consistently after I moved the Shark Pro to a different work bench. To fix it, I had to work on the connector in the wire harness that goes to the z-axis motor. It turned out th...

Daniel, When this happens, does the jog up button cause the z-axis to move down? It sounds to me like your machine is doing the same thing that I had trouble with. There is one wire to the z-axis motor that tells the motor which way to turn. If the wire is disconnected, every step sent to the motor ...

I had the same concern about the bit grazing the surface. My work around is to set the material thickness +.125 inch thicker than my actual stock. I program each toolpath with a start depth (D) of .125 inch (using V-Carve Pro). The only trick is zeroing the bit .125 above the surface of the material...

I also get a load error, but for me it happens when I type the name of the TAP file and rely on the auto-complete to fill in the rest. Sometimes I had "12345" instead of "12345.tap". I was really puzzled because these were TAP files I had run before. I finally realized that I sometimes select the fi...

Curtis, When this happens to my CNC Shark Pro, the first thing I check is the wiring to the z-axis stepper motor (especially the pins in the connector). Next Wave explained that one of these wires carries the signal for direction. A different wire tells the motor how much to turn. If the direction w...

Bob, Ed is right that when you load SD card, the entire TAP file is put on the SD card. Your computer then just becomes a display, allowing you to start, e-stop, pause, etc. It shows you what g-code line is executing, but isn't really involved (the Shark should just carry on if the computer crashes ...

Bob, So your Shark's first move is to go +z until it physically reaches end-of-travel? Have you looked at the first few lines of the program you're running? Here's the start of a program I'm running: G90 G20 F100.0 (this sets the travel rate - it's fast because I'm cutting foam) G0 Z1.0000 (this mov...

Bob, You've got my sympathy. My Shark Pro worked good out of the box, but the gremlins showed up after a month or two. In my case it was a loose wire too. I had the connectors together, but one of the pins or sockets in the connector had "backed up" just a hair. I had to figure out a little g-code b...

Bruce, It sounds like the router is trying to go up one inch but is going down instead. One of your first program lines is probably a fast move up one inch for clearance. You should see a line in the program that reads something like: G01 X0.0000 Y0.0000 Z1.0000 I think your Shark is going the wrong...