It was getting late last night and I wanted to stop for the evening so I just left the machine as it is when I asked for a tool change. Then this morning I noticed the control box was perhaps making noise from a fan inside of it?
What’s the best practice to do when I wanna pause? For example I hit the pause button once but then inside of Carbide motion, I noticed the start button wasn’t available. i don’t wanna start a job…Pause it with the pause button and then turn off the machine for the night, and then I need to restart the job if the Motion loses its place.
Thanks for any links to topics or tutorials on this.
Stepper motors are weird. They work their hardest when holding position.
That said, the motors on an SO5 Pro are bolted to pretty substantial structure which should work as heat sinks to help keep them cool.
That said, the best practice is to break up jobs so that they can be accomplished in a reasonable period of shop time.
If a file isn’t fully cut, the best way to resume it is to figure out where it was cut up to, then modify the file by disabling toolpaths (and editing their associated geometry/begin depth as a last resort) so as to arrive at a file which may be safely cut after so as to resume things where they were left off.
It is possible to edit the G-code so as to preserve the pre-amble and then continue the cut where it was left off, but that puts the onus of getting everything just right on the user.
If you have a SO5 and you want to leave your machine on for extended periods of time I strongly recommend that you put a fan unit over the heat sink on the controller. That heat sink gets way too hot and the stepper drivers it is cooling will start to over heat and cause undesired motor behavior. The fan you hear spinning in the control box is for the DC power supply and does not do any good cooling the rest of the electronics. If I leave my machine idle for too long my motors will start clicking and moving without being commanded to due to the drivers overheating.
I use three 24V 50x50x20mm fans mounted onto a 3D print that is then VHB taped onto the controller to cool the heat sink. The fans draw power from the AUX port so they turn on when the controller does. With the additional cooling, my drivers no longer overheat and cause bad motor behavior.
If you send “~” to the controller through the MDI it should continue from where you hit the feed hold button. “~” is the grbl command for cycle start where “!” is the command for feed hold. Feed hold is what pressing the pause button on the pendant does.
I use gSender instead of carbide motion and gSender has an option to continue the file from a specified line number(it also remembers the last line number from the last file ran) which allows me to easily restart a file after a power cycle. Do note that your zero will probably be in a slightly different location if you power cycle due to the repeatability/accuracy of the homing sensors.
If you left at a tool change then I would shut down and when ready to go again simply edit the c2d file and disable the previously run tool paths. If it is an advanced vcarve then edit that tool path to cut the pockets first or the vcarve first depending on which one was run before shut down. Then when the advanced vcarve asks for the next tool simply stop the program and if more tool paths are still to be done simple do as before and disable all the previous run tool paths. That makes life simple and does reduce the wear and tear on your machine. As @WillAdams stated the hardest thing on a stepper motor is holding. Likely occasional pauses like your overnight would not hurt them but it is not helping them either.
Another option that might work if someone wants an off the shelf cooler is the M.2 SSD heatsinks that are becoming popular. I’d be interested in knowing more about the power output of the AUX port. Nice work!
