I decided to take a similar plunge with my S5P… I’m starting the thread a bit early as I’m still waiting for molex connectors and wire to arrive so I can complete the installation, but thought I could use the space to document/answer questions as I go along.
Hardware:
I’m using the Vortex rotary that Neil linked to in his post. Presuming things work as well as they did for Neil, this really shouldn’t be difficult as he’s done all the hard work already. I’ll keep track of the parts I use/steps taken and take some photos of the cables and anything non-obvious along the way. I will comment that some of the Amazon units actually look nicer than the Vortex, but the Vortex is very close to plug-and-play and I wanted to just keep things simple until I better understand all of the pieces.
Mounting:
I have already moved my gantry on my S5P to allow milling past the end of the bed. My rough measurements show this gives me 3" of safe travel in front of my bed. Vortex recommends a maximum 4" diameter in the rotary, however, I believe it will allow for closer to a 6" diameter (with faceplate/alternate attachment). This is probably a limitation of their CNC with the unit mounted on the bed rather than below. My mid-term plan is to make a mount for this that takes advantage of that front-of-bed space when I want to use it. I’ve not yet decided the best way to do this, but I have a couple ideas.
Software:
The big open question for me was always how to generate the proper gcode… My plan is to rely on the v-carve post processor from Neil since I’m already using v-carve and this again keeps things much less complicated. I believe that the resultant gcode is compatible with CM, but I’m not 100% sure about that. If not, then gSender will likely be the next piece of the puzzle…
If you mean Vectric Vcarve, the later versions of it directly support Carbide 3D machines and @Allen44 has posted an updated version which has some statusing info and a few other features.
I assume that these would work with the rotary if you are using those toolpaths within Vectric but can’t say for sure as I have not tried.
@dath1974 I shared the A-axis version of the post on the other forum…I doubt that one would work with Motion. This one used the Y.
That said, I’d recommend gSender as it’s really well set up for using a rotary axis.
Sounds like I should look up the post from @Allen44 as I’m interested to see what he added to the post processor. And yes, I did mean Vectric Vcarve. I’m using the latest version for most of my stuff currently, though I do use Carbide Create and Fusion a bit as well.
I’ll poke at gSender while I’m waiting for my parts to show and make sure it at least works with my current setup before I change anything.
Not rotary related, but I want to try gSender. I have read multiple posts across multiple forums from multiple years.
Is there a single place that has the current state of affairs with it which includes which pieces/macros we need to get bitzero and bitsetter functionality working? I know @neilferreri has some macros but not sure if it’s clear where they would get incorporated into the overall flow.
I just read through the gSender documentation and it appears that the bitsetter would be directly supported by choosing the Fixed Tool Sensor wizard in the tool change settings menu.
There is a section on the tool probes with different types and they show one that looks like the BitZero V1 and indicate that you simply have to measure the offsets of the probe and enter them. I am not sure about the BitZero V2 though since it requires a different motion/calculation.
Cullen, I think everything should work based on reading I’ve done around the forum… I’ll find out this weekend hopefully and let y’all know if I run into any issues. Since it’s opensource and I’m a software developer in my other life, I’m also reasonably confident I could correct any minor annoyances if I’m motivated enough. I’m excited about giving it a shot as a little more customization for a couple jobs I may be running repetitively could be a big win in terms of cutting out bit change prompts and probing at the beginning of subsequent jobs as well as maybe changing the bit change location to something that doesn’t risk me dropping bits on the floor…
Sounds good. I am heading out to the shop in a few minutes to install my spindle. I got a water cooled one so need to replace the drag chains as well so it will be a longer adventure.
In a different thread there was discussion about effort to swap back and forth between gSender and CM. The conventional wisdoms was that it was easy as closing/opening the other program. However, if you make any firmware changes in one or the other I assume you need to reload. Wondering if there are any settings written there which work better one way for gSender and a different way for CM.
Regarding switching back/forth and changing settings… I already to this with Lightburn and what I do is just run a macro before I exit Lightburn to restore the original CM settings… Then when I load Lightburn again next, I run a macro in Lightburn to setup for the laser. Pretty simple as long as you don’t forget!
EDIT: Also, congrats on the water cooled spindle! I’m tempted by a larger spindle that would give me access to more bits, but I could easily get into a state of constant modification and never get any “useful” work done again!
I got a water cooled one, but it is a 65mm with the er-11 collets so no larger bits for me I am afraid. I have the Pro XXL not the 5 so I could not support the 80mm spindle. I still have a Z Plus and I hope it will work out. This spindle is way heavier than I expected.
I did order an 8mm er-11 collet to support the larger McFly shaft. Finding an 8mm is a bit of a chore.
I don’t think you would need to make any adjustments in either CM or gsender, maybe something in your post processors. I use both when making router cuts, but only gsender when using the laser. Any adjustments I’ve needed have been done with the PP.
Gotcha! I also went down the 8mm er-11 collet rabbit hole and got a couple plus an assortment of other sizes… I needed the 8mm size to use some dovetail bits that I’ve still not gotten around to trying out with the CNC rather than handheld router and jigs… Soon!
Depending on how you plan to use the dovetail bits on the CNC it may be worth actually checking the angle on them.
If you’re planning to cut in a vertical jig, tails with the dovetail bit and pins with a straight bit, I discovered that some of the dovetail bits I had bought were not the angle stated. The better quality cutters were closer and some were dead on. The mismatch confused me until I asked “is that damn cutter actually the angle printed on the side of it?”
Seems I’ve been busy and distracted with a zillion other little projects! I did finally make some progress. I made cables and connected up the Y/A switch and verified I’m still able to use the Y axis as normal. That’s all working great! I haven’t yet hooked up the limit switch wiring as I don’t quite understand how that needs to be done. I’ve read everything @neilferreri wrote up, but I feel like I’m missing something obvious still. Perhaps I can just connect the limit switch in parallel with one of my Y limit switches as only one would be active at a time anyhow, but I need to make sure I’m not missing something.
I also tried out gSender and ran into a problem with the “Test Run” where it appears to get confused/hang. I looked at the source code for gSender this morning and believe I need to check the “Passthrough” box in the bitsetter configuration, so I’ll give that a shot and see if it doesn’t correct the issue. I also need to grab someone’s macros for using the bitzero as gSender doesn’t have native support for it. Perhaps I could submit an enhancement back to them if I had a working macro, which I believe there are a couple floating around for me to try…
I’ll update with progress again soon and when I know everything is working correctly, I can provide documentation on the steps I went through to enhance what Neil provided already.