@ssbxfire - OK in 1.0.170 onwards, I've made a tiny change for your here: Instead of showing /dev/tty.??? i am stripping the redundant /dev/tty. (saving 9 characters length) and also putting Note in front of ID (So you get the important details to the left so even if its cut off, you see more of what you wanted to see) (Also fixed the Copy/Paste issue for MacOS, and added a Quit/Edit menu to the top menu bar to make it more Mac standardised ) OpenBuilds/OpenBuilds-CONTROL
I was considering getting a big red button e-stop but then I read in a few places, I think once on here somewhere, that the power button on the iot is essentially a kill all switch. I have used it twice already. Do you guys and gals consider the iot switch an acceptable e-stop or should I start looking into getting a big red button one again?
nb, personal opinion only: I just use the switch on my powerstrip. But i can imagine in a real (injury causing) emergency the bigger the button and easier to hit, might help save a little more of the finger its busy chopping?
I got one of these 'missile switches'... It has 2 sides and so far I have wired one side to the power supply. The other side will eventually go to the emergency stop input on the Arduino/Blackbox. Why this kind of switch and cover? because it is hard to bump ON but easy to bump OFF and real Estop switches are very expensive.
This is ironic........after discussing e-stop yesterday I was in the garage carving a grid in my spoil board when apparently the file I had created was about 1/2in to long on the Y axis and the gantry slammed into the back of the machine. This caused one of the flexible coupling to snap. I was unaware of the break until only half the gantry started to move forward. Luckily I was close and able to hit the IOT power button within about 4-5 second of noticing the half gantry movement. After stopping it had created about a 20-30* movement from the normal 90* angle between the x and y axis’ (crappy drawing below) Luckily I had a spare coupling on hand and was able to replace the broken one. From a visual inspection the gantry supports that are connected to the V wheel assembly looked to still be inline and I couldn’t see anything that was bent or broken on the 90* corner brackets or the X axis support c-beam that connects to the V wheel assembly. After checking the machine for quite a while I finished running the spoil board file (after modifying the dimensions) and everything still seems very accurate. I’m going to continue to monitor and inspect for damage but other than the broken coupling I think I narrowly escaped any major damage. I probably should check the calibration again too. -To avoid the collision with back of the machine can/should I install another limit switch and tie it in with the other Y axis switch? Maybe I should do that for the X axis as well? In the machine sketch the red boxes are current limit switches and the green are what I’m thinking of adding. -I’m going to buy a big red oh SH%T button now. Maybe could have saved me a second or two. Doesn’t sound like much but to me it’s worth it. Would anyone mind explaining how should I integrate the e-stop button with the IOT? What it should be in between? Sorry for the long post but I thought I would share my learning experience and ask for any suggestions on the limit switches and the addition of the e-stop. Thanks! View attachment 40277 View attachment 40277 View attachment 40278 View attachment 40278 View attachment 40279 View attachment 40281
The Wisdom of the Grbl Wiki speaks: gnea/grbl and from gnea/grbl : "If you'd like to have hard limit switches on both ends of travel of an axis, just wire two limit switches in parallel to the axis limit pin and ground."
The software told me there was an update available this morning so I downloaded it and installed it and I am now at version 1.0.74. When I opened the software it then told me that version 1.0.70 was ready to be downloaded. I restarted my machine (Win 7) and it still says the same thing. Hmmmm. Can't seem to include an image.
1.0.74 is quite old! Sounds like you were on that, and since we are at 1.0.170 already (96 versions later) its probably having trouble updating because what you have is sooo old 1) uninstall from control panel 2) cleanup install directory C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\[Local or Roaming]\Programs\OpenBuildsMachineDriverRoaming)\OpenBuildsMachineDriver\OpenBuildsControl, or could be under Program Files. Depends 3) download and install latest version from OpenBuilds Software - FREE Software for CNC Control: OpenBuilds CONTROL and OpenBuilds CAM
If you have normally open limit switches - if you have normally closed limit switches wire them in series. Alex.
As explained in the first link. Just copy pasted the section from the second link to indicate its worth reading
FYI, that kill switch I installed is rated at 600v at 10amps. One could easily install in on your main power line to kill all power. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NTT91Y0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Hopefully this is just me. But if I try to Jog right with my keyboard control doesnt move at all. It will move left and Y+/- but it wont move right with the keyboard.
This is a bug @Peter Van Der Walt You need to go and remap the key to 'right' instead of 'arrowright' click 'wizards and tools' click "customize shortcut key assignments"
Fixed in v1.0.171: OpenBuilds/OpenBuilds-CONTROL Note that if you ran an older version it will have the wrong key saved so if you still have issues, please do reallocate the correct key: (We only deploy default keys when there is no saved set) Click Wizards and Tools -> Customise Shortcut Key Assignments. Scroll down to JOG X+, click in the Input field to the right, and press the "right" keyboard cursor key.
Every so often on my laptop, the control software will dump the usb comm port connection. It still shows the comm port in the heading but will not reconnect to it. I have to unplug the usb connection from the BB and plug it into a different port on the laptop. Then it will connect again using the same comm port number. After a while that port will dump as well. I can plug it back into the first usb port and repeat the connection and it will work again. Short of taking my desktop out to the workshop, I was wondering if anyone else is had any issues like this. Fyi, Windows 10. Laptop has a fresh install on it with only a few programs. Thanks.
Click on "Notifications" icon at lower right side of the screen. Click on "All Settings" icon. Click on "System" icon. Click on "Power and Sleep" icon. Click on "Advanced Power Settings" icon. Choose "High Performance" and click on "Change Plan Settings". Click on "Change Advanced Power Settings". Click on "USB Settings" and disable "USB selective suspend setting". Can this be made sticky?
A Documentation setup for the software is on the near term todo list Similar to the Blackbox documentation at docs.openbuilds.com/blackbox with info for the software too. Thanks for answering that one Just appending, if its not OS settings, also be mindful of EMI (good usb cable with ferrite cores, good grounding)
Wondering about long carves. How do you guys and gals handle if something comes up where you have to leave the shop/house and go somewhere or if it's late and you want to continue the next day? Can you pause, turn the spindle off and resume later? If this is possible would you have to leave the machine powered and the laptop running? Forgot to add that lately if I have a job that's going to be more than an a couple of hours or so I try to save the code so the jobs aren't more than about an hour each so that if something does come up or goes wrong I don't have to much to redo.
Doing this hinges on having a defined home position. This means you either have home switches OR you always turn on with the gantry in the same place. This is how I do it. I push the gantry back and right and turn the Z all the way up and that is my home. Since GRBL remembers the G54-G59 offsets through power downs you can return to the job quitw accurately. I always cross check Z height before starting. since there is no way to 'run from given line' this is best achieved by splitting the job into separate files and just stopping at the end of a file. otherwise you need to wait while soem lines rerun, or you need to hand edit the file to remove the unwanted stuff. This is tricky since you have to be sure about the Gcode you are reading and remove exactly the right stuff.
I became interested in what others here do for long carves after I read a post on Facebook about someone leaving the machine running all night on a 24 hour file. While I find that scary and dangerous it made me wonder if there are other ways to "break up" a job within the Openbuilds control besides splitting up the carve into manageable time pieces like I do now. I'm kind of following what your saying David....this isn't like sending the machine to the work piece home is it? When in the middle of a carve would you pause it and then send it to your home and shut it down? When you come back power it up and zero the bit at the home machine and resume carve?
Hello I have a small CNC 3018 update and I can not configure Openbuildscontrol. My CNC 3018 does not have a model that looks like a proposed one in the software list. Could someone please help me?
not workpiece home, machine home. G54 stores the offsets from machine home to workpiece home, so if you always turn on in the same place then the offsets are repeatable. What I would do is generate the gcode into separate files, roughing in one and finishing in another. Run roughing and then send the machine home G53 G0 Z0 G53 G0 X0 Y0 turn off turn on now a G0 x0 y0 should put the bit at exactly the workpiece zero that you started with. check the Z zero is still valid (should be, but check) load the finishing file and Run. I don't think stopping in the middle of a fine finishing pass is worth it, you may see a little bump at the restart point unless you are very careful, and editing the code for the restart can be a problem. What is a much better plan is to optimize the finish pass cut time. There are usually a lot of settings in CAM software and though the defaults work some changes can make the code much faster and the cuts look the same in the end. For example in Fusion360 there is an option called 'smoothing'. when this is turned on the gcode has much fewer points in it and the code is smaller and runs faster. Technically you will be able to see the difference in a shiny surface like metal but in wood you just cannot unless you set the parameters to crazy values. I set the smoothing offset to the same as my step size of 0.025mm. Since the machine cannot take a smaller step the end points of any cut do not need to be at a finer resolution than what the machine can do. So have a google for advice on your particular software and I think you will find a way to make cuts faster without losing resolution.
Only Machine Bundles - OpenBuilds Part Store come with preconfigured profiles. You'd need to setup your own firmware settings: gnea/grbl
I have a weird problem with OpenBuilds Control v1.0.172 software. My CNC machine has XPro V3 board, separate stepper motor drivers, and desktop computer running Windows 10. The machine stops once in a while, the title bar displays "Not Responding" a few times, and then continue cutting until it happens again. I thought it was bad GCode generated by VCarve but it was not.
PC Specs? CPU/RAM VCarve files can be quite large, and theres a lot going on (streaming gcode in near realtime, parsing feedback, logs, 3D views, etc)
