So I didn’t listen to the advice when buying my Shapeoko Pro a few years ago, and bought a Standard. I now find myself pushing the size limits of the bed. I’ve done a couple designs, placing them at 45º angles to get them as big as I can.
The issue is that the toolpaths I’ve generated in Fusion often go beyond the maximum XY locations. Carbide Motion seems good at telling me when I go beyond the minimum X or maximum X positions, but not the Min/Max Y positions. So, what I think I want to do is have a program that looks at the .nc file I’ve generated and tells me the min/max for both X & Y. Then I can:
a) Determine if my design can be cut
b) Where to physically place the Shapeoko’s XY origin so that the .nc file doesn’t hit the boundaries.
I mean, I could manually scroll through the .nc file and look for the lowest/highest X and Y values, but that will take a long time and be error-prone. I assume there’s got to be a program or script that will do this for me.
Unless there’s a better way to handle this? The X-axis limits could be found via trial and error, but not the Y-axis limits.
Carbide Motion will limit how far you can jog your machine. That is determined in the setup. The cutting area for jogging is usually conservative. So there is a little bit more room on the left side and front beyond what CM set up. Now when running gcode there are no limits to where there are limits. Obviously there are physical limitations and you smack into the rails or run out of room in the front. The back and right are set by the homing position. So you can jog all the way to the left (x) and see if there is any more room before you hit the wall. If there is you can adjust the limits of jogging by editing your shapeoko.json file. That file can be found by opening Carbide Create, then Help and then Open Data Directory. In the Carbide Motion folder you will find shapeoko.json. You can edit your X and Y maximum positions. Only change a few MM at a time and then test that you are not going to hit the wall. After editing the shapeoko.json file save it in text format. Then you must close Carbide Motion and power cycle your Shapeoko. Bring up your Shapeoko and then Carbide Motion and connect and initialize. Then jog all the way left and to the front and see if you have maxed out before hitting the physical limitations. If you still have room go through and edit shapeoko.json, save and then go through the power cycle and restarting CM. The shapeoko.json file is only read when CM starts up.
Again jogging is limited but running gcode is not limited and you can cause your machine to hit the limits and likely loose steps. However by increasing the jogging you can see if you material and cutter can be positioned so as to not hit the wall.
Here are the parameters to change in the shapeoko.json file.
Do not use the numbers above as they are for my SO3 XXL and yours will likely be different.
The negative number is in MM and the distance from the home position that the jogging can travel your gantry. Do not change the Z but you can change the X and Y but do so carefully and do not max out the movement. Be sure you save the shapeoko.json file in text format.
Write down you changes because every time you run the setup the shapeoko.json file is overritten with the c3d defaults. So after running setup you would need to edit shapeoko.json file.
Nothing I know of will tell you if your file will hit the physical limits. My suggestion is to set your travel to the maximum, then jog to the limit and see if your tool will go past the edge of your project.
I have not used Camotics in a while but you can check if you can configure your machine and check if it predicts if you will hit your limits. Not sure if it can do that but if anything would tell you about hitting limits it will be some 3rd party software.
I originally asked for something to give me the min and max extent of the XY travel for a particular .nc file. I know my machine’s limits and could then easily compare.
Well, it wasn’t working for me in build 636. I’ll update Carbide Motion, check my jogging limits via @gdon_2003 's suggestion and report back later today.
Note also my spurious Z-Axis warnings in another thread. Maybe they’re related somehow.
Close. The steps actually are:
• Open Carbide Create (weird since we’re changing Carbide Motion, but OK)
• Help
• About
• Open Data Directory
What I found worked with fewer iterations was to:
• Rapid Position to SW
• Inspect the left and front mechanical collision points
• Jog over as close as I could get without hitting them
• If there is still a gap, measure it.
• Set XY zero in CM
• Rapid Position to NE
• Jog as much as possible to upper right. Note that even if a 1mm jog won’t go, sometimes the 0.25mm or 0.025mm jog will go.
• Write down the current XY position as shown in CM
Now, if you didn’t have a gap at front left earlier, those are the numbers to use.
But, if you did have a gap on either X and/or Y, then add the gap you measured to the XY reading out in CM now.
Now quit CM, edit the json file, and restart CM.
Check and tweak. I only needed one small tweak.
As for machining outside the limits, CM does warn you when travelX and travelY are setup properly:
See this thread: