How do you hold small pieces in place while cutting? I've attached a picture of a gear, it cut great except when it got to the last tooth and the part flew off the machine leaving a unfinished gear tooth. I'm a newbie this is only the 3rd thing I've cut om my homade machine.

Matt

Your description suggests you are cutting this from a sheet that you clamped around the edges. Put a stop in your program after the spokes and center hole have been completed so you can fasten a disc of plywood over the partly finished gear using screws through the spaces between the spokes.

Or just drill the center hole first, and then bolt it in place on a jig or fixture.

Have the machine cut the center hole first and then pause the cutting and put a screw in the center hole and continue cutting. This has worked for me.

You can take it on CAD if your fortunate enough to have it on a .dxf or any CAD file. Take and print it off and put the paper where you want you part to sit in your fixture. Then find the x,y roughly on your paper with a small drill and call it x0 y0 then program the areas you wish to cut out to hold your part.

We do alot of odd shaped parts in soft jaws and small tooling plates using that exact method. It works great for almost any strangely shaped part.