We use cookies to personalize content, interact with our analytics companies, advertising networks and cooperatives, and demographic companies, provide social media features, and to analyze our traffic. Our social media, advertising and analytics partners may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. Learn more.
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.
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.
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
I just remembered something which is probably related to Phil’s issue.
Looking at the code for config.h here I remembered reading this:
// NOTE: IMPORTANT for Arduino Unos! When enabled, the Z-limit pin D11 and spindle enable pin D12 switch!
// The hardware PWM output on pin D11 is required for variable spindle output voltages. #define VARIABLE_SPINDLE // Default enabled. Comment to disable.
Phil, can you check what pin your Z-limit pin is connected to on your Arduino (11 or 12)?
I remember I was working on flipping this on my original controller just before I switched to the X-Controller. I think the source of your problems is related to this.
Does this ring a bell with anyone else - did anyone doing probing with the original controller also happen to play with enabling spindle PWM first and swap the wires?
I just remembered why I was looking at the wiring swap above, I wasn’t trying to enable PWM, I was disabling it to see if it worked better that way when controlling the spindle power via a relay - disabling PWM would cause the output to be a simple on/off and I think that actually did work well, but then the X-Controller with 1.0c came along and made this unnecessary because you could set max spindle speed to 0 and that would disable PWM in software.
So nevermind about the above swapping of pins 11 and 12, unless you were trying to disable PWM as I was you wouldn’t have run into this.
The decision not to upgrade is only applicable to your machine software, you do not control the Easel software version so any functionality may change overnight.
I stongly advise that if you need the machine to earn a living you should not take any risk and follow the Inventables upgrades. Then you can call Inventables if something goes wrong.
I bought my ShapeOko2 machine before Easel was born and my major Hobby usage has a different toolchain, therefore I will stick to the Arduino, just upgraded to Grbl1.1d which works great with the Probe macro in UGS 1.09.
Phil, if you want to play around with 1.1d by all means go ahead, but this is in a beta version right now and Sonny warns people that there will be issues to resolve. Not anything bad on his part, but any new software release has issues, and this is not really a release, but a beta product intended for testing to find the problems it may or may not contain.
I just added the dust collection attachment and the Probe stopped working. I tested for continuity with connector disconnected at the X-controler, both wires were ok. After scratching my head I decided to re-setup the machine and un tick the Dust Boot, the Probe started working. I re-setup the machine and added the Dust Boot and the Probe failed. So I guess there might be a problem in programing? I have the X-1000 with the X-Controller
