Hi all,

I'm pretty new to the world of cnc cutting. However am skilled with autocad and am a furniture maker so I'm not a complete novice to the industry.
Weve just bought a used clean example of an 8x4 pacer cnc and have just started to get it set up and running.

Im confident that the table is both perfectly flat and level we did it with engineers levels and lasers so I'm happy it's all set up correctly.

So where im at it this:

I've installed a cutter at diameter 15.8mm and selected the offset at 7.9mm and have successfully cut squares and rectangles manually using the keyboard manually moving the machine a given amount for example a 400mm square. This is all working great and cuts both square and accurately.

My problem is when it comes to cutting a basic 2D shape from a cad drawing.
Were using the pacer XMC-e software which I'm getting used to using however when I import a dwg of this basic rectangle the software is saying that it's an open path with the corners of the geometry overlapping eachother where they meet. This means when the machine is cutting you end up with a funny shape at the corners where the machine continues on its cutting path for an extra millimeter or so then lifts the cutting head repositions slightly before cutting in the next direction. also the dimensions are out if this makes sense where a 400mm side is coming out at around 428mm.

I did the basic shape on sketch up because I left my laptop at home with auto cad on it and had to convert the file to a dwg to import into the pacer software.

So im thinking it could be a few things wrong here?

1. Maybe sketch up simply isn't the programme to draw with
2. I need to group my geometry together in cad before importing it into the cutting software?
3. My tool setup isn't correct?
4. I've got the cutting path on the software set up incorrectly?

Any help would be great whilst I'm learning to use this.


Chris