Easel Enhancement Requests - Easier Co-Ordinate view and resetting

Hi, I absolutely love Easel, just wanted to say that. The way you have offered this for free is amazing and the way you keep updating the program and just making it so much better is also amazing.

I have a couple of suggestions which I’ve always wished for with Easel to help make it even better. They are very basic but I think very effective. I apologise if these things have already been raised before.

  1. I always find it a pain to know what the co-ordinates my machine are at before/after a carve. The only way I can see there is to view co-ordinates is through the Machine Menu, Advanced and Machine Inspection. What would be great is when you click on the Carve button, the co-ordinates are displayed on the right hand side under the controls to move the machine around.

  2. In addition to seeing the co-ordinates, i would like to be able to reset to 0 for all 3 axis and again it would be good if there was a button in the carve screen on the right hand side to reset all co-ordinates.

  3. Quite often I work with a large design, I like to start the carve from the middle or the top, so I move the design accordingly on the grid so 0,0 is at the middle or at the top of the design. This means that the bottom section of the design has no grid for reference, or the design is missing off the screen completely. It would be good if you could have the design on the grid all the time. Or is there a way to do this already?

Thanks heaps and once again, I think Easel is awesome!

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I agree with all these things. Here are some options I’ve found that work for me.

I always find it a pain to know what the co-ordinates my machine are at before/after a carve.

Ctrl + D on windows, Command + D on mac. Esc to close

In addition to seeing the co-ordinates, i would like to be able to reset to 0 for all 3 axis and again it would be good if there was a button in the carve screen on the right hand side to reset all co-ordinates.

UGS does this in a single GUI. I do my best not to rely on machine coordinates. Use a process like this 3D Help Requested - #5 by JeremySimmons to set initial WCS, and return to it reliably.

Quite often I work with a large design, I like to start the carve from the middle or the top, so I move the design accordingly on the grid so 0,0 is at the middle or at the top of the design.

Vectric does this out of the box.

It’s very nice of Inventables to offer Easel free of charge, it’s relatively good for basic design and introductory carving. Their customer support is good too. However, when making suggestions for Easel design, etc, I’ve found those suggestions to fall on deaf ears.

SAFETY REQUEST (ESPECIALLY FOR BITS)

Could we get independent X/Y and Z jog distances? I usually will test the flatness of a setup (especially after clamping) before I start carving by indexing in various places over the material. This usually is done by indexing in X/Y using a large value (4 to 6 inches) and then moving up and down in Z by .01, just to make sure the piece is still flat.

I’m sure you can tell where this story is going. Today, I killed not one, BUT TWO 1/16" bits because I hit the Z down button before I reset the travel distance, and watched in horror as the X-Carve pushed the bit thru the material and then the SNAP of the bit was heard.

Yes, I realize that this is 110% my fault, but having separate jog distances would help prevent stupidity errors like this.

Thanks,

Don

You should try the soft limits feature of grbl

$20 - Soft limits, bool

Soft limits is a safety feature to help prevent your machine from traveling too far and beyond the limits of travel, crashing or breaking something expensive. It works by knowing the maximum travel limits for each axis and where Grbl is in machine coordinates. Whenever a new G-code motion is sent to Grbl, it checks whether or not you accidentally have exceeded your machine space. If you do, Grbl will issue an immediate feed hold wherever it is, shutdown the spindle and coolant, and then set the system alarm indicating the problem. Machine position will be retained afterwards, since it’s not due to an immediate forced stop like hard limits.

NOTE: Soft limits requires homing to be enabled and accurate axis maximum travel settings, because Grbl needs to know where it is. $20=1 to enable, and $20=0 to disable.

$130, $131, $132 – [X,Y,Z] Max travel, mm

This sets the maximum travel from end to end for each axis in mm. This is only useful if you have soft limits (and homing) enabled, as this is only used by Grbl’s soft limit feature to check if you have exceeded your machine limits with a motion command.

Also… z-probe for the win.