Hi all, total newbie here, in fact I only finished assembling my new cnc 3018 this morning. I am running the 3018 offline as my pc is in the house and my cnc is in a separate workshop. Everything works perfectly; I ran the iPhone file on the sd card as a trial and it worked very well. I bought the cnc to make a simple plaque to go on a grave for my neighbor. I created the design in Easel, exported it as a .nc file to the sd card and plugged it into the offline controller. The controller found the right file but when I went to run it, nothing happened and the controller froze. I reckon I have been through the design and export process about 20 times now with the same result. I am clearly missing something (not surprising given my experience) and could do with some assistance from one or more of you experts out there. Thanks in advance, John
Can you post the first 20 lines or so of the Gcode here?
I hate to have to ask, but, what programme do I use to view the .nc file content?
You should be able to open it up in wordpad or notepad. It is a text file.
OK, thanks, won’t be long…
Is that enough?
G21
M3 S10000
G90
G1 Z3.810 F228.6
G0 X23.817 Y54.356
G1 Z-0.700 F228.6
G1 X23.841 Y60.189 F711.2
G1 X28.712 Y60.161 F711.2
G1 X29.353 Y60.006 F711.2
G1 X29.918 Y59.748 F711.2
G1 X30.407 Y59.385 F711.2
G1 X30.800 Y58.936 F711.2
G1 X31.082 Y58.416 F711.2
G1 X31.251 Y57.825 F711.2
G1 X31.307 Y57.165 F711.2
G1 X31.251 Y56.538 F711.2
G1 X31.082 Y55.976 F711.2
G1 X30.800 Y55.481 F711.2
G1 X30.407 Y55.052 F711.2
G1 X29.918 Y54.705 F711.2
G1 X29.353 Y54.458 F711.2
G1 X28.712 Y54.309 F711.2
G1 X23.913 Y54.260 F711.2
G1 X23.817 Y54.356 F711.2
G1 Z-1.400 F228.6
G1 X23.841 Y60.189 F711.2
G1 X28.712 Y60.161 F711.2
G1 X29.353 Y60.006 F711.2
G1 X29.918 Y59.748 F711.2
G1 X30.407 Y59.385 F711.2
G1 X30.800 Y58.936 F711.2
G1 X31.082 Y58.416 F711.2
G1 X31.251 Y57.825 F711.2
G1 X31.307 Y57.165 F711.2
G1 X31.251 Y56.538 F711.2
G1 X31.082 Y55.976 F711.2
I’m going to copy it and run it in mach3 to see what it does.
It makes a D shape so I’d say the gcode is OK. Mach3 isn’t Grbl though. I suspect it is one of your settings but can’t really help with that. Hopefully somebody with the same machine can chime in.
It’s supposed to say “Beloved Brother and Uncle”. I reckon I have looked at every possible setting, to no avail. Many thanks for trying for me.
Well this looks just like the outline of the plaque, I’m sure the rest of the file is the rest of the text.
Is your spindle capable of 10K RPM? Is the machine capable of 700mm feed rate?
The plaque is a simple wooden rectangle 174mm x 109mm with the text carved out in the centre so why it would produce a d shape is beyond me. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what the Rpm or feed rates are, the tech info that came with the machine is a tad thin.
This is a screen shot of it . It goes around once, and stops before the completion of the second pass. I’d try another crack at creating the gcode. Maybe slow down the spindle speed and feed rate?..
How bizarre! I’ll try it again with more emphasis on getting the machine settings a bit more realistic. Thanks again.
The feed rate is about 28 inches a minute, which isn’t that fast, but those machines are supposed to be engravers, so maybe it’s more than it is supposed to be? I don’t know.
This talks about slower spindle speeds…again, I don’t know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hobbycnc/comments/9xrdpk/feeds_and_speeds_for_cheap_3018_question/
Just found the spindle speed which is 3000 Rpm.
Well you can always knock a zero off the 10000 line of code and retry it. You can cut air first and then change the code back to faster if you find that it makes a difference.
I’ve changed it and will go and give it a try…
Nope, same result, it asks if I am ready to print, I select “OK” and it instantly says “Printed” and freezes. I’ve sent a copy of the file to Inventables in the hope that they will see it when they wake up in Chicago.