I am building and learning the x-carve 1000 and I had a pcb project I need a circuit card for so I looked on-line and gathered up files and hardware and am having trouble with documentation for chilipeppr software. Can someone direct me to a set up for the auto leveler circuit for the xcarve???
I am also working on getting my X-carve set up with the TinyG and Chilipeppr. While researching Chillipeppr the other day, I came across these two links. Hopefully they help!
This link explains an easy way to set up the auto level; basically you use the z-min switch as your probe.
Attach an alligator clip to the endmill connected by a wire to one of the pins on the Z Min Switch. Solder or tape a wire connected to the other Z Min Switch pin to your PCB board that you are about to mill
If you are looking for more advanced auto leveling, here is a link that explains how to use Chilipeppr’s auto leveling feature. Haven’t tried it yet, but it looks awesome.
So in other words you are paralleling the sense set up with the limit switch. Interesting I suppose that is easy enough I’ll try that and see how it works Thanks for the link! I’ll go see how flat my pcb pocket is!
FYI @milbot mentioned TinyG. I believe the wiring is a little different if you are using GRBL.
You may need to do wiring different asGRBL hooks up a separate probe to pin A5 on the GRBL Shield / Arduino.
But the software is same. The auto leveling works great and will make all the difference when milling PCB’s.
Just got off the phone with inventables and yes I have a grbl setup using pin a5! I apparently need to verify the signal for the probe pin in the code for the autoloader and I need to run a connection from Pin A5 to the work surface. This should get me going if the code reads the A5 pin . Auto leveling is not a problem but having a how to in a complete version somewhere is. It appears that there is no written documentation except for the popups in the software to tell you how to do the job in chilipeppr.
Does anyone have contact info for John Lauer?
@JohnLauer has been active on this forum.
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but if you click on the drop down on the auto-probe widget and select “Fork-widget” you can see the code that runs it.
Yep I used the fork to get the affirmation that the code was calling for A5 pin but now I ran into the metric conversion conversation I sent on your forum. I got files from Eagle in the default scale of inches so auto leveler is waiting for me to process metric files to let the autolevel and cutout run in CP… Does the eagle file loader load a whole project of files or one file at a time into gerbl files??? Just curious…
What you could try is directly dragging in the BRD file from Eagle into ChiliPeppr as that is supported by ChiliPeppr. That way you get metric output for your PCB milling. You may want to use the xpix version of the Eagle BRD Import right now as that version generates drills. Also, if you need to do the bottom of the board use the “mirror” or “flip” command in Eagle to export the bottom of the board as the top.
Don’t think I understand the use of the bottom as the top??? Also I have had a problem with the zero getting stuck in different places when I upload with flat cam will the eagle file give me a good ref point for both top and bottom and drills all using the same zero location???
Opened up CP and didn’t find anything on xpix jumpin out at me what did I miss???
Oh, just navigate to the URL I gave you. It’s a fork of the grbl workspace that has a better version of the Eagle BRD Import widget.
As for reference points for top/bottom there are no features in CP that will help you on that. Sorry. You’re on your own on that one. Maybe you could add some holes in Eagle to get the equivalent of a registration?
Got some load on xpix that is something about the solder paste applicator. Is that the page I was supposed to find? I did get the eagle download to work out finally but I still have no procedure for making the zero reference and mirror work right w/o doing on screen measurements and plugging them in as ref pts on the transferred file load. Does anyone have a good process for setting and producing zero on a pcb design and milling it ???