I have the Big OX and only having sporadic success in running a program, in the past John Lauer was correct in suggesting part of my problem could lie in the area of WCS , however I only get the correct combination on rare occasions when trying to run a program with too many hard crashes.
when I bring up chillipeppr then attempt to zero out the X,Y and Z, I seem NOT to select the right combination in the drop down window after the X and Y axis are in the desired position and the Z axis jogged down to the work piece.
If I select the Z for instance and the drop down window offers up the following;
----Go to machine Zero on Z axis
----Zero out machine Z axis
----Go to work Zero on Z axis
----Zero out work Z axis
I would appreciate someone setting me straight in choosing the correct combination
Hi Billy. Understanding machine and work piece zeros can be a rather daunting task.
Click the home button. Z should home first, followed by x and y. These are the machine zeros.
Move the end mill by jogging to the work piece “zero” location. This is what we will consider the work piece zero. If what you drew is all in the upper right hand of the 4 quadrants in the cam software, then you need to jog the machine to the lower left hand bottom of the work piece. Jog the the machine down to the work piece. Now tell the machine everything is at the work piece zero by clicking zero out machine axis X, then do Y, then do Z.
Hit start.
Hello Brandon, thanks for you help and guidance, must I home the machine first then use the procedure you advised, could I not just jog to the desired position then click the machine zero?, the fact is when I home the machine I am unable to jog the machine because tinyg alarms the DIR, I re-set still cannot jog until a few hours later, who knows how this occurs!
@Billy_Lester great question and you are exactly right. I do not often use limits on my routers, certain freedoms to it. If you skip the homing it is perfectly fine. Go to the start of the piece you are about to make, do as you note, zero all three, then start. Homing is not required.
Thanks Brandon, these steps are as I have performed but still no joy, I am convinced that I am over looking some simple step or sequence
Well here we go again, tried to run to different g-codes today following Brandon’s suggestions, both G-codes began as one would expect except both codes were truncated just after the runs began, the tinyg led’s (tx and rx) began to flash . The images were brought into inkscape, then into makercam then loaded into a laptop, windows 10, 8gb ram, battery fully charged with charger connected. I looked at the G-code data and observed nothing unusual except the truncated message,Don’t know what to suspect: computer , makercam ,chillipeppr, Json. I should also say that all motors work as expected when I jog them into position.
Any thoughts out there?
Hey @Billy_Lester drop your Gcode out here, myself or someone else may be able to take a quick look.
Truncated is new to me, would like to see the message.
Sorry Brandon, I must have cleared the code since I kept getting messages to clear files.
No problem @Billy_Lester I will be happy to try the code whenever you can drop it on me.
I have had problems with zeroing the work coordinates With Tiny and Chilli. Homing is usually not a problem mechanically. The router always goes to the correct place. However, sometimes I see no numbers (other than zero) in the machine DRO window but do see changes in the work coordinates window as the spindle moves z, x, y. I have to power down and restart chilli then MAYBE it will work synchronously. My thinking is that I should always see numbers in the machine DRO when I am homing. Once it does then I have a good chance of setting my work coordinates.
- I home the machine to the point where both the machine and work coordinates are all zeros when finished.
- I move my bit to my work area zero for x and y and zero G54/5/6/etc.
- I use the touch plate to get my Z zero. Sometimes I get really wierd numbers and have to do a couple of runs before it works.
- Once the work coordinants on Z look like they fit the thickness of my zero plate I feel ready to go.
- I always run a test and run the spindle to machine zero and then to G54 to make sure it works. Sometimes, the machine runs to a wierd machine location that has me scatching my head and sometimes the work area trys to bury the bit. When that happens I start all over.
By the way I rarely use the individual zero capabilities in the work area.
Not sure if I am doing something fundamentally wrong or not but it sounds like your issues are somewhat like mine.
To say the least it is frustrating.
Since I am on a soap box I will air another issue that keeps raising its ugly lock Ness head. I will be running a job and somewhere midpoint the machine seems to think it needs to be about 2-3 inches farther right on the X axis and screws up the whole job. It moves over and keeps on trucking with perfect results in the wrong location. When I demo the file in the viewer it runs perfectly. When I demo the job in my G editor it runs perfectly. When I demo the code in VCarve it runs perfectly. Seems like the code in the file is good. Somehow, somewhere, something in the TinyG is going crazy! I am going to try breaking my job down into smaller parts to see if that help, but that takes a lot of extra time.
Not sure all my chatter helps or hinders, but it is what it is. 