Paxman, you have never answered the most important question! What softare are you using to calibrate and control your Maslow? Ground Control, Web Control, or Makerverse. Without that info it is difficult to really help.
I use a Mac with Easel every day and have never had an issue. I draw or trace everything I want right in Easel, I don’t use or even have Inkscape. Once you have your design and you are CERTAIN it is sized correctly, just go to the “Machine” dropdown menu and choose “Advanced” at the bottom in blue. That will bring up a screen that has a blue button that says “Generate Gcode”. Push it and it will create a perfect .nc file. Now open Ground Control and open the .nc file you just created. If this doesn’t work, then you have something else going on.
If you have a .edu email account you can get a free month of easel pro, which will allow you to generate g-code. Easel is very easy to use and should get the job done.
I have an Easel trial. I use the trial image scaled to 96"x48". Easel shows it as a small design on lower left of cutting area.
I generate G-code and load it into Groundcontrol but nothing shows. It lists over 6K instructions but nothing visible.
Check the height of your design and the step down that you used in easel. Also try pressing define home in ground control. (Do the define home first) Easel likes to position things in weird places sometimes.
I run my maslow on a Raspberry PI with WebControl and I like it better. I just use VNC viewer to run the maslow from any computer in the shop, or my phone or tablet. Very convenient and very stable.
@Paxman Yes, you’d need an external microSD card. That acts as the hard drive for the Pi. I have one set up for my Maslow, and it works great. Installing the software isn’t as hard as it looks. I had a lot of trepidation in getting mine set up as I did not have a Linux background, but the instructions were pretty straight forward. I loaded the Rasbian OS software first, and then found a post on here as to how to get it to pull the WebControl software. I did not feel comfortable with the “Pi Load” some said was created as I had read a few had issues with it. With the Raspbian OS, I went to the RPi page and they have an installer, you can chose which version you want, then point it to the SD card it will install on, and then click ok. It did it’s thing, Bob’s your uncle, and loaded the card in the Pi. Hooked it up to to a monitor (actually my TV), keyboard/mouse, plugged in the power, and then I was able to follow along with the WebControl set up on my regular laptop, entering all the command that was needed, and I was off and running!!
it is done via Wi-Fi. when you set up WebControl, it will essentially run as a server on the Pi, which you can then access through a web browser via any device you have (MAC, PC, tablet, phone). I have a surface that I use to control my Maslow via the Pi, and it works great!!
That is the most common and supported way to use Web Control. It lets you put
the computer that’s talking to the arduino close to the arduino with a short USB
cable (which significantly reduces the chances of electrical interference
causing grief)
@Paxman Yessir!! here is the “how to” that I followed: RPi Webcontrol for dummies@Orob does a fantastic job of listing out the steps and the commands to input at each step!
I read through it about 50 bazillion times before I even bought, and then even attempted to try setting it up. I found it to be pretty straight forward. Some of the terms needs to be updated (Like the names of the Pi OS), I think, but all of the commands that need to be typed in and all the set up procedures were spot on and everything worked. The only issue I had was I set it up in my family room (Maslow is in the garage) and tested the connectivity and the service running WC. It took a bit to get the right USB port to be recognized, but a couple of resets/power cycles (shutting the Pi down appropriately on all attempts) eventually got it working and recognizing the Pi. The good thing about that post is there was someone that had some issues that were able to be worked through, so that was also helpful for me to look out for that to happen. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have any (aside from the USB port). I have a Pi 4 that I got from ADAFruit, but any of the distributers are fine. I think it is either a 1GB or a 2GB. I loaded the regular desktop version so I could see what I was doing (I am a bit of a visual person), but I am pretty sure I could redo it with just the command line interface (CLI) version of the OS and save a little space on the SD card. (Of Note: ensure you enable SSH or VNC BEFORE you try to take it out and use it headless with your machine!! Ask me how I know!! )
I even set up /home/pi/.WebControl/gcode as a shared SAMBA folder (instructions here), which is a nice feature as I can just use my laptop inside to design my project and create the gcode for it, save that Gcode to the SAMBA /home/pi/.WebControl/gcode, and I don’t have to worry about transferring it via usb or anything to the Pi as it is already there. In WC, I go to Open gcode and the file is there.
Again, as someone that didn’t have any Linux experience, I found it was really very simple to do and get set up.
Good luck! But I’m sure you’ll be able to get it all taken care of. there are plenty of resources here to help you get taken care of and everything up and working.
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