What am I doing wrong

[John Alden]

I bought a Axiom A/R 8 Basic last November and just getting to play with it. When I surfaced the spoil board had a heck of a time because of being out of the x & y soft limits. Which I figured out the problem there I was putting in the full size of s/b 48.5"x 24.5". So I change it to 48x24 and got it run that way but it left a 1/2" strip down left side and 3/4" strip on the bottom. I used a pocket path to do it first. Then tried a profile on the line pass with a 1.25 end mill was out of soft limits on x. So I tried profile inside the line it only cut .25 off the bottom and nothing off the side. Then I tried laying out a 1" grid down. I sent everything to the home then moved to origin and zero out, it went out touch cut about .5" in the y+ then picked up and y-. It tried to go beyond the end of the table started clicking. I'm using vcarve pro 9.
So any help will be much appreciated
Thank you
John

[Bill George]

John I am finding the same thing with most Chinese made equipment when they say 24x48 that's a nominal size. The board may be on the table that size but the work area is not the same.

[Jim Becker]

See if there's a way for you to find out what your actual soft limits are for the machine so you can possibly temporarily adjust them to do your surfacing. (That's possible with my WinCNC controlled Camaster, but I'm not familiar with how your Axiom works in that respect) You can also "trick" the machine to get those edges by telling it your spoilboard surfacing cutter is smaller in diameter than what you are actually using and adjusting the step-over in VCarve Pro so that you're not taking bites that are too narrow on each pass to be efficient...but be absolutely sure that the "hang-over" is going to clear anything metal around the perimeter of your machine bed.

[Gary Campbell]

John...
Measure your table and then look this over, it may help: https://youtu.be/T-q_B2jY_Ic