I tried my first cut today (attached), which was a couple of rectangular panels. profile.ngc (156.4 KB)
My M4 crashes when trying to cut this job at the first arc. There was no warning, the machine just wandered out of the cutting area and did not seem to respond to stop commands on the UI so I pulled the chord. A photo is shown below of what the M4 did and a screen cap of the job in the .ngc file so its clear the M4 just wandered off on its own instead of following the profile paths
1: Where can I find the information to verify that my gcode is generated sanely for the M4? I remember for the M2 I would get similar issues if the arc radius was too small for the fixed point arithmetic of the arduino. I also wonder if I need to be mindful of maximum cut IPM in the job settings? I am using FreeCAD to generate gcode with its grbl post processor.
2: I want to confirm there is no way to emulate the M4? I don’t want to damage the hardware with incompatible gcode, but I seem to recall there is no way to test off the machine.
My guess is that your problem is a loss of communication between your browser and the M4. For some reason–and I can’t say what that reason is, because the M4 would already have all the gcode in memory–when the m4 loses communication it will sometimes just keep doing what it was doing, causing it to wander off the workpiece.
Regarding your questions, gcode is ascii, so you should be able to read it, which is tedious, but doable. Also, when you load the gcode to your machine, the GUI should show the path the router is supposed to take. I’m not aware of an emulator.
You can look at your g-code in a 3rd party viewer to validate that it ‘looks’ right.
I googled, there are apps, etc. but
let me load/paste a file in to confirm that it was not the g-code. It’s not actual Maslow emulator, but should give you confirmation it looks as expected.
you are having the same issue several are running into. @bar is looking at it.
Make sure that your browser and laptop don’t time-out, etc. seems to help with at least one source of lost connections. Running it in AP mode (vs client of local network) is another.
Thanks for the replies pointing at lost connection problems. Ill see if running from a system that doesnt invoke low CPU c states helps.
@boxomatic, Is the browser dropped connection problem the issue bar is looking into?
it’s one of them.
It seems as if more people have had problems with the maslow connected to their
wifi than with connecting directly, it depends on the locatin of your access
point vs the location of the machine you are using to connect directly.
The maslow is actually less stable on dedicated wifi and appears to be much more reliable when used in AP mode, from my experience.
You want your control unit set so that it never goes to sleep or turns on a screensaver (the most you’d want it to do is let the display turn off, but I wouldn’t even do that) if you want to be the most sure.
The maslow is actually less stable on dedicated wifi and appears to be much more reliable when used in AP mode, from my experience.
we’ve seen people say that it’s more stable going direct.
the wifi range of the maslow 4 is poor, so it’s going to depend on which is
worse, the wifi range from your computer to the maslow, or the wifi range from
the access point to the maslow
access points typically have better antennas than laptops, so it’s not a simple
distance measurement
The issue is also compounded by creating two points of potential failure instead of one when you use dedicated wifi over connecting to the Maslow’s network.
This is 100% an issue that I am working on right now. There are two issues. 1st FluidNC is crashing when the wifi network is lost while the machine is cutting so I need to figure out why that is happening and fix it and then 2nd if FluidNC crashes for whatever reason we want the machine to stop in place and not wander off. This is top of my todo list so I’m hoping to have a solution in the next couple days
I was going to give the machine another try today but if this is a know issue with a fix in flight I will wait until the weekend in case its taken care of by then
Ok major bummer, I’m still getting the crash no matter if I chase the maslow with my laptop 30cm from the machine in app mode, or if I use the facility wifi.
The maslow always crashes at exactly the same point in my gcode without fail.
Updating to the latest firmware prevented it from wandering off to nowhere so I can at least be confident I am experiencing the issue @bar is working.
@bar If you want a (more) super reproducible case(s) for this issue you can use the profile.ngc attached at the start of this post.
I am also attaching my serial log if that is more helpful than the complete job.
Does it fail if you run the job without the router turned on? Make sure to set your Z height so that the bit won’t actually hit the wood, or just take it out.
A crash at a predictable place is a very valuable thing. Let’s see if others can
duplicate the problem. Can you post the gcode that is causing the crash and tell
us where it is happening?
something that always crashes at exactly the same point is not going to be
static electricity or interference
Hi @dlang & @Carson_Barry, thanks for the responses and suggestions. I had the same thought that it was unlikely to be static since there is nothing sporadic about the crash.
Instead I think something about the gcode is disagreeable. Linking back to crashing gcode which was in OP for others to verify the crash.
My machine crashes after the 4th movement which is an arc. In the OP is a visualization of the job showing the arc. The arc is just below mid way up on the left side of the bottom left panel.
@dlang please let me know if you see the crash also. It takes about 4 minutes to happen.
I haven’t fully read through this thread, but recalled reading something about arcs / g-code and fluidNC, so here you go for further research:
And your g-code does include G2 for that arc.
I feel like I’ve read somewhere or talking with someone? @bar? about how different g-code renders ‘simplify’ complex shapes / curves. Into arcs, or into simple lines, etc. but that’s about the extend of my knowledge on that specific topic so far.
GCode wise I ran this through ncviewer.com and it did not present itself well. I had to flip around several settings to even get it to show up. It was behaving weird from the start.
So I ripped out the preamble and postamble (interesting that they seem to be copying GCodeClean with those terms) and then ran your GCode through GCodeClean to get this:
