Does anyone have a link to a simplified way to get the vcarve toolpath I saved onto my machine. I hear people say of just send it with grbl. Ok. Well I need a step by step on installing grbl and then sending a toolpath through it. People make it sound easy but it’s been a terrible pain I can’t figure put on my own. I have vcarve pro and an xcarve. I have been using easel for a long while now and ready to make use of this expensive software
People here generally use UGS, or Chilipeppr. There are several posts on using them here (search), but there should be a category/thread discussing all Easel alternatives.
Suggested to use nightly builds over current, stable version.
Yea I downloaded the ugcs but it doesn’t appear to be a program just a jar file and some other stuff how do you use it ?
Double click the jar file, as long as you have java installed, it will launch.
Well I guess I don’t because I get the "unable to find software to open " message. Lol wtf I thought every computer hamd java
Got the ugcs up with java now it says grbl not finished booting. What’s this mean?
connect at 115200 baud
Well I’m msking progress now I’ve got it connected but alarm lock keeps coming up
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Go to the machine control tab and press the $X button to clear the alarm
Ok got it. How do you tell it what home position is. First time I loaded up a toolpath it went through the board almost with no bit
In the machine control tab, use the buttons onscreen or the arrow keys on your keyboard (left/Right is X-Axis, up/down is Y-Axis, pageup/pagedown is Z-Axis)
Position your spindle where you want the X, Y and Z-Axis home position and press the Reset X, Reset Y and Reset Z buttons onscreen.
Before you send any file to the X-Carve, be sure that you have zeroed X Y and Z then exit UGS and restart it to force the machine zero to be at the current spindle position. Then just verify that the machine zeros and the work zeros are all showing zero in UGS (the work position may be non zero, but you can fix that with the Z Y and Z zero buttons).
Then when all three work positions and all 3 machine positions are zero you can send the gcode file to X-Carve.
Ok got it. Why does my automatic spindle control no longer work ?
What spindle are you using?
If using the Dewalt with a relay, the S12000 command must be before the M3 command in gcode.
S12000 is speed, it won’t make a difference with the dewalt speed, but it is high enough to trip the relay to turn on the dewalt.
Will have the dewalt soon but for now it’s the 24v stock spindle
Is my zero the table height or the top of my work height ?
Everytime I run something the bit is about 3/16 above my work. Hm. Zeroing the machine seems to work fine
usually, the zero is top of material, make sure that is what you told V-Carve.
I have no experience with the 24v spindle, make sure the switch is on logic, and you are using the x-carve post processor in V-Carve. check the g-code (open in a text reader) and make sure the header has spindle speed and the command to turn it on.
Well whether I zero the bit to the work or that table the machine never touches the work. Everything else spears to be fine. Except it looks too fast for 100 inch min