Editing CNC Router (section)

==What can go wrong (and what to do about it)==
The big things that can go wrong are:<br>

*A piece becomes loose.
*You leave power applied to the gantry motors.
*Your material starts to burn.
*The end mill hits a screw.
*You hit the E-Stop button.
*You manually move the gantry.

Hitting pause in the Shopbot software will stop the feed of the router, lift the end mill out of the piece, but allow the end mill to continue to spin. This allows you to pause the cut and resume the cut later. Th
is is also what should do should a piece become loose or you see fire. In such a situation you should hit pause to stop the feed and then shut off power to the spindle motor. Hitting the E-stop button, the big red one on the table, will cut power to the XY gantry motors, but the end mill will continue to spin. You should not regularly use this as leaving the end mill down into the material when a piece is loose increases the risk of sending it flying, and in general pieces should not become loose because you have added a sufficient number of tabs of sufficient size.

If you damage one of the end mills while using it, please replace it. You can purchase end mills through industrial supply companies like [https://www.mscdirect.com/browse/tn/?searchAheadTerm=end+mills&searchAhead=true&hdrsrh=true&typahddsp=Square+End+Mills&navid=12106240&tg=Matching+Categories MSC], [https://www.grainger.com/category/machining/milling/end-mills/square-end-mills Grainger], or [https://www.mcmaster.com/end-mills McMaster Carr].

Manually moving the gantry with the power turned off will cause the ShopBot software to lose track of its actual position. The CNC router needs to be calibrated after this happens. Don’t manually move the gantry.