General travel speed

This may be a stupid question… and it probably is, but I have been watching various videos from forum members and can’t help but notice the general travel speed of people machines tends to be much much quicker than mine (I mean movements to and from locations and between cuts). I can get quicker feed rates when cutting etc, but how do I speed up the general ‘walking’ around speed of my machine. I have a modified shapeoko 2 (270 nema 23s all round, acme upgrade).

I expect I am having a brain fart and someone will come up with the obvious in plain sight setting that i am missing… but help would be appreciated.

Thanks guys.

Simon

What kind of spindle you have Simon?

I have a 0.8kw air cooled spindle run off a vfd… are you thinking the weight of the spindle will limit the speed at which movements between cuts can be made?

What program are you using to generate your G-Code files? Or are you using Easel. The rapid movement between cuts is what you are after …the G0 setting.

I occasionally use maker cam and gcode sender but generally I have been using easel… can I alter that setting within easel?

I don’t use easel, so someone else can answer this…and I am sure they will :slight_smile:

If you go to Easel’s Machine Inspector, you can adjust the following settings that relate to speeds:

$24 Homing feed
$25 Homing seek
$110 X max rate
$111 Y max rate
$112 Z max rate
$120 X accel
$121 Y accel
$122 Z accel

To change a setting:

  1. Go to Console and type in the change you want (i.e. $110=8000), and press enter
  2. Refresh the settings by pressing the double arrow icon above the settings box
  3. Reload Easel

I see where my problem is, I am running grbl 0.8… therefore i need to update my grbl to have access to those settings. thanks for the info!

@SimonPhelan

Also keep in mind that people posting videos might have sped up the playback speed when they make the videos. My videos are often up to 5x. That would make a comparison inaccurate.

I think a big part of the difference that you’re seeing comes down to two things:

  1. playback speed as MidnightMaker has mentioned.
  2. Knowing what program was used for the CAM and sender. I haven’t touched the rapid settings in Easel, but I know that they are MUCH slower than the rapids that I use with Fusion360 or V-Carve + UGS… I find that the Easel defaults are very conservative all-around on feeds (both rapid and cutting).

Yes correct, but you still can change Easel as well, if you go machine tab, you can change things. On other pro software like Vcarve or Fusion, you have to change your stepover numbers. Let say if you’re using .25" bit and your stepover is 1/10th of the bit size. You will be sleeping while watching your carve. Usualy all this numbers comes with Vcarve Pro pre adjusted, i have never have to adjust any, but Fusion tool path always assuming you’re gonne do hard aluminum. And even you increase the numbers, it will be defaults for the next toolpath. That’s what I like about Vcarve pro. Lot easier to control thrue tool library. Feeds/speeds/stepover and plunge rate is the main factors for get the job done in reasonable time. Some people trust GWizard, I never get luck on it. 3 years paid, sitting on my desktop alone. You may want to give it a shot.