I am all for the engineering effort and the tinkering. But I just don’t understand this sentiment. The bit is noisy and the vacuum is noisy, so I am wearing ear muffs anyway. I am usually listening to a podcast while in the shop. Just curious if there is something I am missing. I do like the burshless speed control though.
I only worked on that for about a week, trying to incorporate other people’s mods in a more stable way. I need to revisit with Ryan to see how I can make this more flexible. I would like to add a config for something like duallr=true to enable features like this. But I haven’t had the itch.
IIRC, you were on the “ok with software” side of the spectrum. I am sure you can figure it out. There is one file with all the home commands on it and you could either take over one of the other buttons or add a new one if there is room.
Here is the file:
You could replace one of those G28 commands with G38.2 or add another button.
I was poking around with it last night and found that area. I wasn’t sure if it was something as simple as just defining the button above and then adding the command below, but that was the impression I got.
Where I got hung up was trying to figure out how to select the icon I wanted to display. I couldn’t find anywhere that explicitly called out which icon to use. Is there a file that gives the variables and the actual icon names so I can select the one I want?
That TFT firmware needs a complete overhaul. I love where it is now but it is too complicated to edit and it does too many things behind the scenes. I will do a quick google to see if anyone has cleaned it up. Such a great tool at a great price but that firmware is no good. In my humble opinion.
Hey if you end up not wanting those NEMA motors, let me know. I am building a Print NC setup to go along with my lowrider and would love to put those motors to work.
Holy crap I just realized that is a water bottle. ha ha yeah, im pretty sure those bad boys would rip a print nc build right in two. maybe ill reach out in a few years when I’m building a crane to lift cars. haha.
This line defines a specific icon and a specific label.
The language stuff is the most annoying:
There are like 40 different languages and adding a new label, like a “Probe Z” means adding it to every file. Some grepping for Z_PROBE will help you see how it gets pulled through. I think the rest is pretty automatic and a lot of the stuff like the interim stuff gets built automatically.
This is where the icons are loaded into the code. These macros build everything up. I think the only other thing is adding it to the tft folder. Again, grep would help. I am on my phone ATM.
I dunno. It isn’t the cleanest, but it really is doing a lot and most of the structure is to make it easier to not repeat the same thing over and over. I am not sure that once you added as much as this does, you would be able to make it any simpler. I feel like I have a stronger grasp of how this firmware works than Marlin.
It really isn’t doing much behind the scenes either. I hooked it up to a uart to usb connector and I was able to talk back and forth with it (the computer script was pretending it was Marlin) and it really wasn’t doing much. Just a couple of periodic requests for data. I haven’t tried running a gcode through it. We may have 1-2 loose bits of change we need to solve.
Well I am glad you understand it…cuz that is all sorts of greek to me. I guess my biggest complaints are the little things that we could fix if I took notes and complained about specific things.
I only wish I was that organized. I have seen people complain that it does funny things when both gray and the black wires are connected (they say it boots for 10 seconds and then goes to the mode select screen and no buttons work, I wonder if the gray cables are backwards or something). I have also seen a few isolated reports of gcode stopping in the middle of a gcode, but I am not sure if I got any of them nailed down to blame the screen. It may have been something else, but I could totally believe a missing ok somewhere might get lost or something.
When I upgraded my linear rails, it pushed Z-axis rails out by about 3/4" of an inch on either side of the table. My X-axis pipes weren’t long enough to accommodate this, and so I ended up having some issues with my Z not being square to the X when it would drop to the lowest height and causing them to rub on the edge of the table. I purchased four new X-pipes, and had my originals cut down into new Z bars that are 30 inches long each. This is to prep for a future double-decker build with NEMA 23 Z steppers.
The longer pipes fixed the squaring and clearance issues. and I had my first successful cut last night after the linear rail upgrades. I’m making full depth cuts at 22mm/s with a 1/4" single flute bit running a 40% trochoidal stepover, and it carved through 12mm Baltic Birch like butter.
I’m just now getting back into the garage to work with the CNC after my Covid hospital stay, and have a “brain fog” moment to share with you.
Before running my cuts last night, I used the machine to drill several holes in my sheet of ply so I could screw it to the table. I then prepped my next cut in Estlcam, saved the CNC program, and then clicked Start in CNC.js… With the “drill holes” program still in there. The machine re-ran the drill holes, using a brand new 1/4" bit… I had to crash the machine with the reset button to stop the program. Thought you guys would appreciate the stupid things the brain does when it isn’t working right.
Sometimes we do stupid things even when the brain’s working right, at times it’s all too easy to forget a CNC machine does what we told it to do, not what we think we told it to do.
Years ago in a friend’s shop, for some reason we had a brand new 2" travel(read pricey) dial indicator in the quill of the CNC mill. It’s been years and I forget the exact circumstances but the wrong button was pushed by someone(not me ) and the quill came down and and turned that indicator into a pretzel against the table.
Checklists (as long as you can remember to use them) are a great hedge against missing a step in a complex process, especially one that’s done frequently enough to be remembered pretty well but not to become second nature/bulletproof. Doesn’t need to be full instructions on what to do, just a phrase that reminds a knowledgeable user to be sure it got done.
) and the quill came down and and turned that indicator into a pretzel against the table.
