Let me just say that this is interesting and leave it at that.
At this point I canât imagine what that means besides the fact that the X-Controller has a connector for the probe pins and youâd have to come up with one for the GRBL board. Despite Philâs experience there doesnât seem to be any reason that 1.0c canât run on that controller and it doesnât appear that there is any special circuitry in the X-Controller to support this function.
I have x controller and 1.0c and .27 and still no probe. its a software bug.
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Did you both reflash your X-Controllers? That fixed it for me.
I have six Arduinos running 1.0c and probing works on all of them. I noticed in a post somewhere that someone mentioned the machine position in negative space, so that may be a factor as I have mine set up for machine position in positive space.
I donât use Easel.
Ron,
I have a new one too (and it came loaded with 1.0c) but I had to reflash 1.0c and then probing worked in Easel.
You can try the new way to reflash in Easel, but that requires Inventables to enable it for you. If you donât want to wait you can do it via the Arduino environment following the instructions linked to above.
I think the negative space is because Iâm 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 âparkingâ at this time. Inventables has âparkingâ enabled in their 1.0c which is most likely why they went back to using negative space.
I think at the moment youâre entire experience is negative. I suspect whatâs happened to you is that youâve tried all the right things individually, but not in the right combination so it feels like youâve done everything possible, yet youâve missed the combination that would have worked. I do wonder if youâve 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 âparkingâ 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 doesnât 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 âsafety doorâ 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 donât have and will not be purchasing the xcontroller. If the answer is noâŚthen 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 profitâŚ
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 â 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 donât 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 âAdvancedâ 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. Itâs 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.