Chilipeppr Motor Lock

Hey, does anyone know how to electronically lock the steppers using chilipeppr when doing a bit change? I know this is possible in Easel, but would be great to know how to do when using 3rd party software.

It is very possible! There is an option during the bit-change (M6) cycle to “put steppers to full power” which locks them.

That’s great news. How would I set that up?

In mine, I just added an “M6” to the code, which is a tool change. In mine, it returns the tool to home, and locks the steppers. Make sure you have your home set correctly (with G28.1), or it can crash!

Is that something that I could just type in manually @ the end of my program, or add it into the .nc file before loading it into chilipeppr? If I set my home position within chilipeppr, is that the same as using the G28.1?

I suspect there IS such a thing, I’m just not sure precisely what the command is. You can always just set the variable in the GRBL to keep the motors locked; (send, without the quotes “$1=255”) That will keep the motors locked any time the GRBL is powered up.

Homing in CP is not the same as setting G28.1, there’s a very good post here on the subject, you can find it here:

Awesome. Thanks for the help!