You can try the new way to reflash in Easel, but that requires Inventables to enable it for you. If you don’t want to wait you can do it via the Arduino environment following the instructions linked to above.
I think the negative space is because I’m using homing switches - do you have those switches installed?
Yes, I have the homing switches and they work well.
Negative space is a tradition in the CNC world and it confuses a lot of people. There is a configuration parameter in the source for grbl that allows you change it to positive space by re-compiling.
Forcing positive space is incompatible with “parking” at this time. Inventables has “parking” enabled in their 1.0c which is most likely why they went back to using negative space.
I think at the moment you’re entire experience is negative. I suspect what’s happened to you is that you’ve tried all the right things individually, but not in the right combination so it feels like you’ve done everything possible, yet you’ve missed the combination that would have worked. I do wonder if you’ve tried to restore ALL your previous settings, not just the ones you specifically changed. You should probably overwrite only the changes you made for a reason (like calibration, soft limits, max spindle speed (which is useful in 1.0c), or max travel).
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In 0.9j or 1.0c
Easy way:
- Download the hex file listed above and extract it to any folder.
- Download XLoader (http://xloader.russemotto.com/xloader.zip).
- Extract Xloader and run it.
- In Xloader, Select the hex file from 1 above.
- Select Uno for device
- Select correct com port
- Baud rate is 115200.
- Click Upload.
- Message will display that it is uploading and will display number of bytes uploaded when upload is successful.
- Turn off power to X-Controller, wait 10 secs., turn it back on.
- Run Easel setup again.
They apparently use “parking” on the pause button on the front of the X-Controller. I changed my 1.0c to positive and had to disable parking also. I noticed different behavior when using the pause button. With parking, when I press the pause button, it raises the spindle and turns off the spindle. Without parking, it doesn’t raise the spindle.
They have enabled the safety door feature which modifies the behavior of the feed hold pin (pause button). Then also parking to shut the spindle down when the “safety door” is opened.
Ok ,so without going through each of the 147 threads and all the technical data that is permeating through them, just want to know if the probe feature will be made available on Easel for those of us that don’t have and will not be purchasing the xcontroller. If the answer is no…then please just say so.
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Answer is NO!
Officially at least. Unofficially i believe there is a way to make it work.
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Well think profit…
A business selling x controllers.
Originally never intended to support probing.
Potential customer error with original controller.
They obviously dont think its worth the risk.
Cant blame em. And yes it did hurt that the x controller released right after i got my machine. I still went and got it just for the probeability.
Screwing over is kinda harsh… no?
They never promised probing to anyone ever. (As far as i know) Untill x-controller. Then they supported it officially in their FREE TO USE SOFTWARE. Hint hint, Phil. Im sorry u have a hard time with it.
This is all speculation, so if you want facts — look elsewhere.
In my opinion, Inventables is using Easel to try to bring CNC to the masses. It is attempting to make using a CNC machine as easy as using a regular computer text/graphics printer.
If you buy into that line of reasoning, then starting out with the X-controller for probing support makes sense in that you don’t have to do any electronics modifications to hook up a probe.
Prior to 1.0c you could not query grbl for the state of the probe pin. If you are trying to make your software work for the uninformed it would be nice to know what the state of the probe input is at any given point. You can do that with version 1.0c.
Success for a small company is a hard transition point as the demands of your customer base can far outstrip your resources and your ability to respond to your existing customers and at the same time develop your new products to make your success continue.
In this type of environment, mistakes get made. Unavoidable. Hopefully as time goes on these issues will smooth out and Inventables can survive the transition.
The macro capability requested seems like a reasonable request and would provide the more informed with a way to work around some of the issues with this topic. A good place for this type of support would be the “Advanced” section.
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I got my X-Carve 12/2015 and when I started to think about the way I wanted it setup with a big red panic button and probe support, buying the individual parts and connectors were going to end up costing a bit of money and be a hassle. So then the X-Controller became available in early release and solved all of those problems. It’s too bad that I paid for the original controller and power supply that only got used about 2 months, but things in the maker world move fast, so I got over it.
I’m disappointing that the probe feature isn’t being made a new feature on Easel as many of us were led to believe via this post
Eric Dobroveanu Inventables Dev Aug 19
Sorry about the confusion. We’re working on a Z Probe feature that will
require a new Easel Driver version. It isn’t quite ready yet, but we
accidentally made that page visible! You can click “Continue without
this feature” to skip ahead. We’re releasing a fix for this shortly.
We didn’t realize it would only pertain to the Xcontroller. I’m not angry but just prefer as most of us, to use Easel over UGS and Chilipepper. In anticipation I already did the simple wire-up for the probe and yes it does work with UGS. Think I’ll just store it in the cabinet until further notice.
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Easel supports the probe for both X-controllers and older **G sheild ** verified by actually trying it with g shield.
This thread is miss leading, inventables deserves some praise. The feature is very well done with lots of protection and reminders built in. I had trouble installing the new softwear. After that the probe “just worked” keep up the good work guys.
Well a few pics of the new work flow and my controller. See my post above for how it got it going. Happy to answer any question.
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That is why I kept 2 arduinos and g-shields, 1 for work and 1 for playing with settings.
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While probing does seem to be working for me now, I think I’m seeing that the probe doesn’t quite stop as fast as I’d expect and the bit is pressing just enough into the plate that I’m seeing a small bit of twist movement of the X axis. I’ve kept the default value for the speed of Z axis travel when probing and may slow it down a bit to see if that makes a difference, but I’d be interested to see if others are noticing this.
I found easels defaults to be very aggressive. From memory I set my speed about 10 times slower. Decreased how far it would travel and how far it would lift to around .25 in. So far that’s worked well for me