My Shapeoko 4 begins to mill a square in a piece of 5 mm thick pine plywood using a number 201 mill. I used latest carbide create to draw a square and perform a shallow contour and the tool was set to 201 and the material dimensions and specs were also set accordingly. Nothing seemed problematic. Opening the saved C2D in Carbide Motion, I jogged my machine and set the position to zero. I started the job. When the job begins it first uses the bit setter. Then it asks me to set my spindle rpm to 18000 or number 3. I am using the carbide 3d router and the manual indicates that 3 is for 18000 rpm.
The CNC begins milling and then stops and I have a GRBL error stating that I need to change my rpm: “Spindle RPM change required”. I did go through several rpm settings but carbide motion and GRBL have little clue how fast my spindle is going. There is no connection to the motion controller on my shapeoko for Pulse Width Modulation or Voltage Controlled Modulation. I just plug straight into the wall with a power cord and I use the rpm setting dial.
Could someone help me understand why Carbide Motion is behaving this way and what settings or variables need adjustment?
Hi Zman. Just a friendly suggestion here. Would definitely work on power quality if I was experiencing intermittent errors with carbide motion. But right now errors I am having are consistent and I believe it’s how gcode is being interpreted by GRBL. It’s the same message no matter what I do. Over and again. I do infact have my control board connected by equipment ground to the CNC machine frame. Routers do impact residential electrical circuits. My router shares a receptacle with a power strip. The strip is for home electronics, coming with noise cancelling. And my television and gaming computer are content and behave well while I am routing.
I have Carbide Motion 622. I do not know what version I had. I just followed link you gave and noticed that build 622 is Oct 2nd and I just recently got started, after the 2nd and not before.
But I also did everything else you mentioned.
When approaching feeds and speeds I hit a learning curve. I had to make sure I understood specifications for the endmills I am using and that the details showing in my configuration area of carbide create agree with more than one source. There was no discrepancy about feed rate and RPM.
I did make a big change in how I zeroed my router. The end result was a much shallower groove made by the router before I get the error about spindle speed change.
So the depth problem was not it.
Remember, GRBL has zero clue how fast my router is spinning. I have no sensors for that present on my configuration. It’s either an error in gcode. For example, a line of code saying “here change spindle speed so I can finish up the tool path taken”. Or carbide motion needs a better option then killing the whole job over a speed change.
This is why I implore you right now to tell me if I should try a different CNC control package. I was considering openbuilds. Is carbide motion inferior to other products on the market for control software?
But it could be a problem with carbide create and it’s output gcode.Maybe GRBL isn’t compatible with auto generated gcode from carbide create.