First and foremost, what an awesome platform!! Big ups to all you clever developers who have contributed…
I have a noob question around auto-leveling… I am using the GRBL work-space as i am running with an Arduino based CNC. Got it working well. I want to get auto-leveling but don’t seem to have much luck with the /grbl version. i did some reading and found there could possibly be an issue and to try using the /imania or /jarret work spaces… but these just load a black screen where the 3d image should be. i know 3d engine is working as its fine on the /tinyg and /grbl work spaces and have tried from 3 different PCs and 2 different internet connections… ive tried following a few forums but they kinda go quiet with no solution to this… anyone got any ideas? many thanks.
In the /GRBL work-space, I’ve made up a very basic board in Eagle… and used PCB-GCode to make a gcode file, drag that in to the editor and can see OK. when i press auto level, the points it draws are HUGE (and Start and End probe) and the measurements don’t seem to line up… electrically i am all good, i can run probe test and im ‘electrically’ all good with arduino pin A5 and GND…
would you say i should be all good using the /GRBL workspace, or should i be using another one like /IMANIA and trying to solve why that has a black screen when it loads?
Below is a pic of my very simple board, and then i press Auto Level, this crazy sized probe area pops up that dwarfs the board layout… when i then go to execute the job, it probes 1 point then stops. missing/deleted image from Google+
Looks like an inches vs mm problem. Auto-level only supports mm. Feel free to fork it and add support for inches. That’s come up in the past. Or, just drag your Eagle BRD file into ChiliPeppr and render the Gcode paths that way and you’ll get a mm Gcode file. I would say /grbl is the latest workspace to use. I don’t think /imania or others have been updated in a while. That black screen is due to Three.js being updated.
maybe i just don’t have my board size defined properly? what i am trying to understand is:
Does the /GRBL work-space all work OK with Auto Leveling, or should i be using someone else’s fork of the code? Am i fighting a losing battle with the /GRBL workspace, or should today, late December 2016 it all be working fine and i am just doing something wrong?
if the GRBL workspace ‘should’ work, then i at least know to go troubleshooting down that path… but i have read other forums (that lead me to this google group) that suggested that it doesn’t work and i should use /IMANIA which i cant get to load past the black screen and the top navigation over to the left overlapping the top left widget…
I have found others having same issue so I dont think i am alone? but the posts were 2014/2015 so maybe its all solved now and i am just making Noob mistakes… missing/deleted image from Google+
It would be nice if inches was supported everywhere, but it makes a lot of extra code be required. It would take members of the community to help add inches.
cheers guys… i dragged the board file from eagle and boom, there it was (in mm thank goodness)! enabled auto-level and it auto-filled a grid… and I’m away!! Easy when you know how… thanks again for your help… im auto-leveling as i type… it does seem though that every time it probes i have to hit pause twice to get it to do the next probe… so i just filled up the buffer with presses… not sure if there is a better way?
anyways, thanks again… auto-leveling like a boss now missing/deleted image from Google+
That probing grid doesn’t look correct. Your first set of points didn’t seem to register because they look flat and it looks a bit wavy to me. What feedrate are you using? Slower is more accurate. The hitting of the pause/unpause seems whacked out too.
Yes video was great! Yes I’ve got a bit more playing around / learning to do. The tracks are nowhere near fat enough etc etc, but it’s milled it and I’m stoked I’ve got this far!! Just a bit of messing round with different parameters to get a better result.
First result attached missing/deleted image from Google+
The component holes line up and everything! As this is my first Project ever with eagle and milling / CNC job (that isn’t the obligatory Alien Face CNC test job), I am super happy with result.
Just learning all the parameters now… thanks again - chillipeppr is AWESOME! missing/deleted image from Google+
Cool. Does look like you lost some of your narrow traces. That would always happen to me on my Shapeoko, so I moved to a 3040 CNC and never looked back. I think the 3040 is actually around the same price as Shapeoko, but it’s got ballscrews instead of timing belts so it’s perfection.
yes, i definitely need to try a few different bits and maybe fatten up the traces a bit, and def go back through all the settings and get my head around what each one does… the holes didn’t quite go through the board so thats’ the first measurement to properly set!
your video really helps but i will need to watch a few times to digest… this was literally a thrown together board for testing and i just threw in the little WeMOS board as a pure test to see if the pin holes lined up with the real world and the calibration of my machine was alright… which it was!! i expected that part of things to be way harder! my mahcine is just a cheap $200 machine off Aliexpress but i think its pretty good for the money and a great way to get in to the world of CNC PCB milling!
Next step will be sussing out the laser and seeing of i can vary its intensity etc…
My recommendation is to move to a 3040 CNC and then use it for milling and lasering as one machine like I’m doing. I think having multiple machines doesn’t make sense anymore. You want a machine with high precision XYZ control, which will cost you around $600. Then just have a laser added onto it, since that’s easy.
