First job blues - scaling issue?

I finished upgrading my new Shapeoko 3 XXL with a Z-Plus and was ready to start cutting. I used Vectric Aspire to create a simple project and saved out the tool paths to separate files. The Vectric model is in inch units as is Carbide Motion’s settings configuration. I used a v1 BitZero probe to set X, Y and Z for the material, and BitSetter to set tool length. So far so good …

I loaded the first tool path file and clicked start, waiting for the magic. The spindle moved to the zero point of the material and started making tiny movements, but not cutting the roughing path I expected. It almost looks like the tool path commands are being interpreted as a small fraction of their actual value.

I verified that the CAD model was designed in inches and that the Shapeoko configuration was correct and also in inches. I reran the first file and got the same results.

So what am I doing wrong? I’m a beginner and this is all new, so I’ve probably missed something.

Can you share your gcode?

Neil Ferreri is an export on many of our CAD programs. Sounds like your post processor may be the problem but Neil will help you.

Acanthus_Sign_1-3D Roughing Sign.tap (317.9 KB)

@dpierovich What Post Processor are you using? We don’t see many *.tap files here anymore. I’m wondering (I should just check, but I’m on my phone and it’s a bit more difficult) if your post doesn’t specify a unit of measurement. Grbl (firmare on Shapeoko) uses mm by default.

EDIT: I checked. No units specified in gcode. Try one of these post processors, preferably Grbl_mm.

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I’m using the Vectric GCode (Inch) post processor. There are lots of options for what to run and this was the first one that looked right. I noticed there is a Shapeoko (Inch) setting that will produce .gcode files. I gave that one a try and it worked.

There seems to be a communication error between my laptop and the controller tho. As the file is processing I throws gcode errors about a command not starting with a letter. Sometimes it will start again, but some just hang the processing run, forcing a reload of the whole job.

I looked at the file and didn’t see any errors.

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