Line bore not drilling, ECAB or CN?

[Brian Fox]

E-cab V.12 & CN V.13

Good morning,

Last week we are running a job (about 40 wall cabinets) but still using our original seeds. Loaded into batch then into cab editor and added 2 shelves (3 total). Tuned off add shelf holes. Maybe 6 of them only had 1 shelf. Return to batch, continued to load about 34 cabinets into the batch in the same fashion. Then went into e-cabs nest area (this I always do) and checked parts. All looks good, including line boring. Sent the job out to the CNC and 2 days later, the machine operator files this complaint.

“Line boring on all right side parts are ok but on the left it plunges the same one hole 34 times. The cabinets with one shelf ran fine.”

So I said to myself, “Self, go back into the batch and delete the added shelves.” Which I did, sent back out to the CNC and we re-ran all the left sides & all was well, 4 ½ hours later.

Next job. Using the same, everyday seed cabinets, and the same procedures as listed above; I batched about 25 wall cabinets. One of those needs to be 9” deep, but still only 1 shelf. Bam! It happens again. The 9” deep cabinet (only) does the same thing. So I tell my shop foremen dig out that thing we used before, what was it called……oh ya, the Dewalt 13 spindle manual machine and just do it by hand. (We’ve had our CNC since last June so you can imagine the look on his face.)

I’m stumped. I consider myself a pretty good trouble shooter but I just don’t know what to do on this one. We updated CN to V.13 last week (that’s another story) but my gut tells me “ Dude, don’t blame CN, the trouble is in E-cabs.”

Any thoughts? ECAB or CN? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Happy routing….

Brian

[Mark Hesketh]

the only thing i could imagine would be to try and regenerate the cabinets after you add them to your batch. take them into the cabinet editor from the batch editor and go to the construction settings. just hit ok and the cabinet will regen. then save it to the batch over the original, and see how it runs after that.

This seems to solve most of the problems that I occasionally run into where it seems that ecabs and cn aren't communicating very well.

[Brian Fox]

The regen or Recalulate as we call it is a habbit we've just gottin into doing EVERY time we make a change. I have found that will fix most of the quarks so we just automatily do it.

Any other ideas?

Brian

[Brian Fox]

The regen or Recalulate as we call it is a habbit we've just gottin into doing EVERY time we make a change. I have found that will fix most of the quarks so we just automatily do it.

Any other ideas?

Brian

[Daniel Vonderheide]

Brian,
I'll start looking into this issue again now that I have the files. I assumed you solved it since I never heard back from you last week.

[Daniel Vonderheide]

Brian,

Taking the cabinets from the batch back into the cabinet editor and regenerating it works fine. It nests with all the wholes showing in the nest area. Previously it only showed one hole in the panels.

[Brian Fox]

Ok, it worked on the second cabinet (1 shelf, stretched to 9\" deep. The second cabinet had the same result, dilling the one hole in the left side multiple times.

And if this had worked for both cabinets, is this the fix Thermwood is sugesting? Do I understand that I am to take every seed in and out of the batch twice to ensure a proper run? Our jobs consist of 100 to five hundred cabinets. Surely something cab be done so the parts are produced correctly with out the extra time.

Thanks,

Brian

[DanEpps]

Brian

If these cabinets were produced in an earlier version of eCabinets and have not been regenerated AND SAVED, you will have to do that for each cabinet. If you do not save the regenerated cabinet you will have to regenerate it each time you use it.

[Brian Fox]

Thanks for the replay Dan,

Just to clarify, we run a number of these seeds through the batch then through router, day in and day out. We’ve run hundreds if not thousands, since E-cab V.12 update. All my seeds have one shelf but on occasion I will need to add more. We go into the cabinet editor from batch, uncheck add shelf holes and add a shelf, back to main, then regen then back to batch. This we have been doing on a weekly bases for a long time.

Then last week or the week before our CNC software glitched and locked up. Termwood had us update the CN to the new version (V.9 to V.12) and we got back up and running. The first time we ran one of these modified seeds is when we started to have the trouble.

So, this would lead one to believe that it must be in the CN update, right? I’m not so sure because it is only the left side. This leads me to believe that it is in E-cab even though it started right after the CN update.

Any other ideas? At our volume this is really thrown a wrench in the gears.

Thanks for all your help,

Brian

[DanEpps]

So you are drilling all of the holes with the first shelf and any additional shelves are added without holes, correct?

This does sound curious since it worked before updating CN. Have you looked at the CNC file to see what it says? I'm not versed on the CNC side of things but if eCabinets is sending the information it should be in the file shouldn't it?

Other than that, try regenerating and saving the cabinet in the cabinet editor before adding the new shelf and returning to batch. Then run the nest and see what it looks like.

[Brian Fox]

Bizarre isn’t it? I did check at the CNC side. The nesting there (graphic) only shows the 1 hole in the left side. This further reinforces my thinking that E-cab is the problem, but the nest on e-cab shows all the holes being there. So the trouble must be somewhere in between unless e-cab is showing a false positive in its nest. Is that possible?

The G code , that I don’t follow very well, show what it should show, I think, if it was told to drill the same hole multiple times.

Yes, we are putting all the holes for the whole cabinet using the first shelf. This way adding shelves is quick and easy, not having to do a bunch of math on second and third hole, to make the line boring look consistent.

I’m now going to try changing to 3 shelves in the cabinet editor, save as its own seeds then load the unmolested seed into the batch. My fear is that this will work. We already have several hundred seeds (all cabinet options in 3” increments).

I’ll let you know how it comes out.


Brian

[Michael RA Greschuk]

Hi Brian We were having problems with the router plunging twice into rta holes and part editing holes and found that it was a edgebanding issue. we removed all edgebanding from all our cabinets and that was the end of the double plunge hope this helps Mike

[DanEpps]

How do you have the holes defined for the original shelf?

I know many users place their \"standard\" adjustable shelf at the bottom of the cabinet and define their holes for that shelf as zero down, 19 up for a total of 20 holes.

Additional shelves are then added without holes as you are doing.

You might want to zip and post the CNC file for Thermwood to check out. I would include both the .twd file and whatever it is that CN produces (the g-code file).

[Brian Fox]

No, we place the first shelf in the middle and run for example 8 holes up and 8 down.

To correct an earlier statement, the single hole is showing up in the e-cab nest, and does show it drilling multiple times. So I was correct in thinking this is an E-cab issue not CN.

Now what is weird, if I delete the edge banding as Mike suggested it works. (see attached file). Thanks Mike! But, I must have EB on so I know how mush to order. Just imagine adding up EB on a couple hundred cabinets?

I’m stumped! So what is next??????

Brian