Hi, I am new to CNC. I mean BRAND NEW. In fact, my Shapeoko 5 Pro arrived last Friday and is sitting in boxes on the floor of my garage awaiting the arrival of its table tomorrow and then assembly.
In the meantime I am taking the online tutorial from Kevin on Youtube and whenever I click on a toolpath such as Contour or Pocket I get everything on my screen that I see on Kevin’s screen EXCEPT for the “OK/Cancel” buttons. The first time - contour - I found a workaround with saving and then reloading but when I changed the tool for the pocket toolpath I lose my work. I have tried everything to get out of this toolpath window but short of reloading the project I cannot, and now with pockets I lose the settings that I changed in the toolpath window. I am on a Macbook Air, running Build 764 trial SW. I plan on buying the SW next week when my dedicated Windows 10 laptop (a refurb, meets spec) arrives.
Help please? Any suggestions? Anyone seen this “bug” before or is it pilot error?
Here is a screenshot of the issue. I scroll down to the bottom and as you can see, no “OK”, nor any “Cancel” buttons. Also note that I had changed the max depth to 3mm, enabled ramping to 15 degree, and changed the tool to #251 end cutter, so saving and re-opening did not save these changes.
I just did and BINGO. I went there before but could not think of anything that might fix the issue.
Then I remembered. I’m blind as a bat (waay overdue for new glasses) and have the font set to Reader’s Digest Super Large. Well, I reset it to “almost unreadable” (aka - Normal People’s font size) and they magically appeared!
Thanks Ed. And thank goodness it was pilot error too. I kinda figured it might be so hence the reluctance to proclaim it 100% as a bug.
For anyone else experiencing this issue with Macs this is the largest font size that I can go to without losing screen features. The choice to the far left (Larger Text) is what caused the issue to begin with.
Am I being a bit overesthusiatic here Ed or is this software ridiculously easy to use? So far the tutorial has been fantastic and it’s now going very smoothly but I read about so many issues. Are these esoteric type issues that people are having and the software is that easy to use, or am I being a bit over optimistic based on my extremely limited experience?
I don’t think your being overly enthusiastic. I believe Carbide Create is designed to get a new user cutting quickly and successfully. As you gain experience with your machine and work flow you may want other options, that may be where issues come in.
The software is pretty easy to learn and this community is very willing to help with that. Draw from the experience of everyone here whether it’s thru questions or videos and you’ll get those projects done and learn a few things along the way.
Well Ed, that’s encouraging indeed because I really do not know what the heck I am doing! I am a noob, like everyone else that first buys or touches a CNC, and have little to no knowledge of the topic. The two skills that I can leverage with respect to the learning curve are a.) I am an enthusiastic hobby woodworker with a full garage shop of tools and projects, and b.) I am an engineer (Electrical) so my math skills with respect to geometry and vector math are by nature, quite sharp. But experiential knowledge (the most important type of knowledge)? None. So, I am glad to be here and glad to hear that others are willing to share their expertise. Perhaps sometime down the road, when I become proficient, I too can pay it forward to other noobies.
The big thing is if you get stuck, let us know what you are having difficulty with and we’ll either find a relevant tutorial, or make a custom one — a few of the more notable ones:
Well, I did not get started on assembling this until later yesterday so I will finish it today. But I am still waiting on the VFD spindle and controller so it’s looking like a week or so out before I am up and cutting. Here is the assembly so far. Probably 30 minute more work then sit and wait for the VFD.
ULINE industrial table holds 1,000 lbs and its on casters. These are nice casters as they lock like they are welded in place. Figured it would be worth having a solid as a tank-like table given the investment already.
