This is something that I’ve seen on a laser cutter recently and found extremely useful. You load the file and press “Frame”, the gantry then moves to draw a frame around the perimeters of the file (Z in the air obviously). This provides a quick way of knowing if the origin is set correctly and whether the stock is big enough. Would love to have this in CM.
While this has been suggested, I worry about implementing it, since it creates the possibility of running an endmill into a clamp and snapping it.
1 Like
Yes that can happen. My guess is that a simple dialog box with a picture on what it does and a warning about clamps can prevent that though.
Or we could pull the big guns and draw the convex hull rather than the square (sounds fun to code 
).
How about an option to enter the Z height at which you will run it?
Several industrial controllers have similar options. Dry run runs through the code without moving the machine. Lock-out Z runs the program without moving Z. You set your Z height before running.
2 Likes
Well, since we’ve opened up this can-o-worms 
, gSender does this without problem by utilizing the safe-Z setting. If you don’t have save-Z setting right in a file, you’re going to have problems during cutting anyway.
Having said that, safe-Z problems are not something that occur often once one gets things set up. Banging a clamp is a great learning tool!
I love the framing feature on my laser, because I’m often trying to fit a job into a small piece of scrap. I don’t usually use hold-downs on my laser though, so never worry about hitting anything. I wonder how hard it would be to orient a laser pointer properly on the CNC router, so you could see where your bit is while raised.
