Hey everyone, I thought I’d share something that might help others.
I wanted to pause the program at a certain point and either resume, or cancel it. TLDR I found this was possible in Fusion 360 if I added a Manual NC command of OPTIONAL_STOP. I also had to edit the post processor to output an M1 g code which the shapeoko understands, but which is not in the default carbide 3D grbl post processor. It only took two extra lines of code:
With this in place, the machine will pause when it encounters that Optional Stop command, and can be resumed again using the green “Start” button in Carbide Motion.
Why? There are numerous use cases but I was surfacing an epoxy inlay and had 10 step downs of 0.1mm each with a pause in between. This mean I could quickly inspect after each step down, and resume if I wanted to go one further. Epoxy inlays are very sensitive to height so this give me full control without having to reset my zero each time and probe the tool.
Thought I’d share Would love to know if anyone has a better way or other tricks of a similar nature.
What event in the toolpath triggers the OPSTOP? i.e. where are you calling onCommand(COMMAND_OPTIONAL_STOP)
I added an M0 to the spindle ON event in my CC post to let the spindle get up to speed.
But I found I had to add it before the spindle command (M3S___) to get it to work right.
@Tod1d Fusion 360 allows you to add a “Manual NC” command and choose Optional Stop as one of the options. You can just add it into a Setup like you would any other contour toolpath, adaptive toolpath etc.
Would love to know if anyone has a better way or other tricks of a similar nature.