Hey Maslowians, I wonder if there might be a better way to set Home in GC? I have been working with small scraps and trying to place a part on them can be tough, especially when working close to the edges. It is time consuming to move the sled to the edge of the cut, measure how far off you are, move the sled back to home and offset, reset home, then move the sled back to double check. Then check the other axis. Takes a while, as you guys might know by now.
In my concept, we move the sled to our desired outside cut point on the stock, then drag the workspace in GC āunderā the sled until we line up with our contours. Then click āset homeā and through some magic that you guys do, it knows how far we moved the original āhomeā and sets accordingly.
I donāt know if itās possible, maybe not. If not, Iāll move this to the āpipe dreamsā thread.
Have you thought about using an L shaped fixture (aka piece of scrap) screwed to the backer and spoil board near the center? Make it the same thickness as your material and wide enough for the sled to ride on. That will give you a known corner position plus support for what youāre cutting. Screw on a couple of clamp blocks for the other edges.
Iām thinking about drilling a grid and putting t-nuts in from the back for fixturing and clamping, maybe 6" centers, when I get to the final frame. Pretty common on other CNC devices. Quick job to drill the spoil board with a big bigger holes, too.
This is a better approach: using spoilboard to construct a jig to secure your workpiece, or as @dlang mentioned, using sacrificial fasteners on the work piece itself to hold in an appropriate position.
Moving āhomeā would result in the machine being unaware of the actual machine edges/dimensions etc. its a bad idea thats more trouble than its worth. Its better that you have a precise location both on the work surface and in GC, if that is achieved you should be able to secure whatever youād like wherever youād like and have it still be accurate.
I donāt think you guys understand what Iām getting at. Say I have a file of a part that I want multiples of, and I want to cut them on different scrap sections. Maybe I want to place them as cuts all over a large piece of scrap. You donāt want to move the stock for every part. Trust me, once you start using your machine more, youāll get what I mean. The first time your sled goes off the side of your stock, or into your other part.
I just drive my sled to a bare patch and āDefine Homeā. I try to keep my files small - few pieces per file, and to put the pieces all just northeast of the home position in the file.
There are enough āfunniesā to the way Kivy handles varying screen resolutions that Iād be surprised if ādrag the sledā could be made to work across the platforms. Now that Iāve said that, someone will surely accomplish it by breakfast time !
I think I get what you are saying. The click and drag behavior is a cool idea but I think it might be pretty difficult to implement so it might be a ways off.
What about a āmark pointā feature so you could move the sled to the edge of an available space and click āmarkā and it would leave a mark screen so itās easy to check if the part is going run into the cut part?
Thanks Bar. My workflow must be strange, but it does suck to try to extrapolate where to put āhomeā by driving to a location, checking offset, then driving back to center and trying to match it. Your āmark pointā would work well. Then when Home is set, the file will shift under the point and one should be able to tell where the cut perimeters are. Iām not cutting anything for a week or so, since I dropped my usb connection I have to recal, so I might as well get that new board you sent out hooked up and do some upgrades to my frame and sled. But, if you can implement something like that in time, Iād sure appreciate it.
!