Just posted a new beta. We added support for the Shapeoko, that should begin shipping tomorrow, and added a “Rapid Positioning” mode in jogging to get you to the corners of the table quickly.
Let me know what you think. I’d love to get this moved over to “released” and no longer beta.
Wonderful! I will try it out too, although i just started a 6h job with the old version about 10 minutes before your post
Oh well, there is always another carving!
I installed the new version and it doesn’t work. When I open the application a windows window opens and says that carbide motion doesn’t work anymore. I installed it in different ways and changed the compatibility settings but nothing worked …
I had a similar problem when I installed Carbide Motion on an older Dell Laptop. Rob advised that Carbide uses OpenGL and I found that Dells video card didn’t have an update for its video driver that old. I re-installed Carbide Motion on a newer computer and everything worked and looked the way it should. Give it a try on a newer computer and see how it works.
Why does this need OpenGL? It’s flat graphics and type.
The new computer angle is a bit of a sore point at the moment, due to Asus’s pathetic quality control and stupidly small and fiddly and confusable connectors and people doing instructions as videos.
The Qt framework that we depend on uses OpenGL heavily. They have an optional rendering system for Windows that I’ll be looking into but most of the OpenGL issues went away on their last update to Qt so we put that on hold.
when it can’t connect, it says it can’t connect to a Nomad — update for the Shapeko 3?
first time I tried to zero I wound up w/ -0.00 for X, 0,00 for Y and -0.02 for Z — despite pressing the relevant zero buttons repeatedly. Other times it was -0.00, 0,00 and -0.00 — while you’re looking at that, could you change the hyphen to a true minus symbol?
is there a manual? I found this page: http://carbide3d.com/carbide-motion/ (which btw needs to be up-dated to mention that it’ll work w/ an SO3). I did find a couple of .pdfs on your site (one mentioned L for the log window and M for the MDI window)
I brought up the latter, typed $$ and hit Send, but didn’t get settings (this was was the Carbide Motion Control Software beta and the Carbide Motion all-in-one board I just got w/ my SO3) — I was able to update $100 and $101 to 40 to get my machine moving properly for 1/8 microstepping though (once I also did this for $102 for the Z-axis)
Nifty and nice looking program — I just wish one didn’t have to toggle though so many windows — have you considered just having an array of tabs / buttons across the top of the window to switch between modes?
It would also be nice to have the option of either a progress meter, or a display of the toolpath and the machine’s progress along those.
I just got my Nomad last weekend. Great product. I like carbide motion.
When doing a project it seems that carbide motion ends up homing and measuring the tool twice. Since I am new to this I am making a lot of simple cuts to understand how things work, and get the feeds and speeds right. The extra overhead of doing homing and tool measurement twice on each job adds up.
The process is load project…move cutter…click to measure tool…move cutter to pick zero point…begin project…insert tool…homing and measures tool…then start cutting.
For the majority of my work I use just one tool per job. Would it be possible on the page where carbide motion asks to insert the tool to have a button for ‘use existing tool’ and a button for ‘change tool’ or something like that. The 'change tool ’ button could work the way it does now. The ‘use existing tool’ button could perhaps skip the extra homing and tool measurement cycle…
I would like to have an elapsed time field when the job is running. It currently shows percentage done and the XYZ positions, which is good stuff. If there was also an elapsed time field I would use it frequently.
There may be good reasons why it works the way it does, but if there is a way to add a couple buttons to reduce some of the positioning and tool measurement cycles it would speed up the process.
It would also be nice to run the same job again with just setting a new zero point, to cut the same thing out of a different part of the stock, and not having to run through tool selection, tool measurement, etc…
3steve - good point. You have to home the machine first and check the tool length before you can start running the project - and after you click run, it homes again and checks the tool length again.
Also, I noticed another quirk
When a job is finished, the cutter stops spinning, moves up to the height I set in the toolpath, but the table doesn’t move - it stays put. Often I need to manually pull the table forward to get at my part.
However if I pause and then cancel a job before it’s over, the cutter moves up and away, and the table moves to the front.
I think this is a good fix - when your job is complete, move the table to the front like it does if you cancel the job