I am working on making some boxes for gardening stuff in my shed, and I ran into an issue about trying to figure out where the limits of cutting are.
With the zero where my stops are for the crush it clamps, on the Y axis, with the position of the spindle in the load/unload position on my Pro XL the Y axis indicates it is at 395.475 mm,
My job in the preview screen on Carbide Motion indicates the extent of the job in Y is 409.58 mm, which is 14.1 mm greater than the load position in Y.
A couple of questions
is the load/unload position the furthest position that is cuttable in Y? If not how is that related?
Is the extent of job in Carbide Motion the size of the stock, the range of the cutting actions(spindle positions)?
Is there any easy way to determine extent of travel? The zero position will change how big of a job can be cut, I think. Right now I have the stops for Crushit clamps along the front, and stops in the left most hybrid table slot. I know I can travel past both of these points.
I’ll need to look at my file and see if I can reduce some of the perimeter scrap width (I try to be conservative for clamping pressures).
I am also thinking I need to CAD up some type of endstop that hangs off of the front of the hybrid table. I’m probably going to have to design something that clamps to the extrusions since I can’t get screw head clearance.
Quick edit I looked up the specs on my Pro Xl
Cutting Area 33"(X) x 17.5"(Y) x 4"(Z)
That 17.5 inches converts to 444.5 mm. The question is then where does the 17.5 inches begin or end? I assume it includes the travel to hit the bitsetter.
Can I cut all the way to the end stop? And where does the carriage stop for load? I have driven it around a bit. I’ll trying moving it back and see what happens (see if I can get to 409mm). I was just thinking if there was a way to compare between preview and the load location.
I went and checked quickly 395.475 mm in position corresponds to -5.000 mm in machine position. I assume that means I am 5 mm off of the end stop triggering. Probably a reasonable safety margin.
There are two things that limit you on a Shapeoko with CM. The first is jogging. Jogging will stop short of the physical limitations of your Shapeoko. That is controlled by the shapeoko.json file. When running gcode there is no limit except the physical limitations. In other words if you send a gcode command to cut a half a mile to the left the machine will try to go there but will be stopped by the physical limitations of the machine and start grinding.
To set your X and Y limitations jog all the way to the left and see if there is anymore room to move left. Edit the shapeoko.json file and power off your Shapeoko and restart CM. Jog all the way to the left and see if you about to hit the physical limitations. I would suggest you give a little buffer room but that is up to you. Same procedure for front and back limitations. The right is controlled by the homing switches so do not adjust the right limit. Jog all the way and see how much more you have before hitting the physical limitations and edit the shapeoko.json file and restart and reset CM. The shapeoko.json file is only read when CM starts and is not read again.
Back in the day the SuckIt dust collector was quite popular. That has arms that stuck out past the edges of the Z mechanism. So C3D would limit the X travel to avoid hitting the Y rails. That legacy still seems to be considered and limits maximum jogging on most Shapeoko machines. Just remember there are physical limitations to the Shapeoko movement and you do not want to physically hit the limits. That can cause your Shapeoko to become out of sync with where it is and where the controller thinks it is.
To access the shapeoko.json file open CC and go to the Help Menu and then About and then hit the Open Data Directory. Under the CM directory you will find the shapeoko.json file. My machine it is located in the CarbideMotion6 directory. On your system it may be different. Edit the file in a text editor. Change:
“travelX”: -880.0,
“travelY”: -850.0,
“travelZ”: -140.0,
My machine is an SO3 so your numbers will be different. The (-) minus is referencing the distance from the homing position in the right rear corner.
After changing the shapeoko.json file restart the Shapeoko and the CM application and jog to the limits to make sure you did not over/under do the changes. Just be cautious. C3D put the limits in for a reason but you can customize to an extent. The shapeoko.json file only limits jogging but does not stop gcode from slamming into the physical limits of your machine.
Revelation!
This is much easier than I thought.
Go to zero point
Switch to machine coordinates
Take that number (actually the magnitude of the number since it is negative)
Reduce that number by whatever safety margin you want.
That’s the cutting area available. Easy Peasy!
I was also able to reduce the cut range of the file by moving the vectors closer to the edge. (almost there).
I am using the output from one of the box maker gadgets for Vectric Vcarve Pro. (not the Vectric one but one of their community members ones). I want to learn the scripting language. I think I can optimize some things once I figure that out.