I have a 4XL, use Vectrix Vcarve and am limited to 25". I read in one of these forums that instead of using a pin to set zero on the tiles, you could just send a gcode command to move the X and then set zero again. I can’t find the gcode lines though.
I tried some stuff and all I accomplished was sending the Shapeoko into weird states. I tried /G20 /G91 /G0 X1 ANd it did move 1" to the right like I expected, but then when I went to jog all commands made it move in the -x -y direction. I had to reinitialize my unit to get it to jog correctly.
One of my tries it sent the machine off to never never land. I had to unplug the 4XL and wait a couple of minutes before it would respond to the laptop.
I also tried going into the set zero window and typing 5.000 into the X box and hitting set X zero, it hung the controller and / or software.
I use a simple board as a fence on the left side. I used the CNC to cut the edge along the Y axis. Then when I put a piece on to be tiled I mark on the fence where the Y zero is. I also mark on the material where zero for the second tile should be.
When the first tile is done just slide forward until the mark on the material lines up with the mark on the fence.
I also added some threaded inserts in that fence so that I could put clamps in there to hold the left side of the material down.
Thanks, but I don’t have to move the material. The 4XL can do the full width, but the software says if I’m going over 25" I have to tile. So all I have to do is reset the origin. It would be real nice if I could just do a gcode passthrough and accurately move to the new origin.
Not sure what you really mean by a gcode pass through. Are you doing this all in one file or is it multiple. I assume multiple so, once you have your original zero point you should know the offset to get to the next one. You could either manually jog or use the gcode commands in MDI to move the router based on what your offset in your design is and then rezero X and Y manually.
If you want move the Y origin 25", you will need 2 commands. If you cut the front section first, then want to move the origin 25" toward the back, so your new X0 Y0 is at your old X0 Y25
first, move the cutter to the new zero point
G0 X0 Y25
then tell the machine this is the new Y0 point
G10 L20 P1 Y0
Make sure your Z is clear so you’re not hitting anything.
I did this in stages to understand how things work and/or don’t work.
I ran a quick little carve to set everything up in the controller.
I sent it to the origin. Then I did /go x2 y0. It went quickly to the back right corner, so it was doing absolute addressing instead of relative.
Next I did a /g91 to set relative addressing and repeated the /g0 command. It worked except it was in mm and nod inches.
OK, no problem, I now did a /g20 to set it to inches. Oops - problem. It did move in inches now as expected, but … When I now go to jog it heads toward the front right no matter which jog key I use. I have to reinitialize the controller to get it working right.