So I got my Maslow all setup and calibrated and was cutting a test design out. I drew the file in CorelDraw, saved as .dxf, converted to gcode using dxf2gcode and everything looked fine. I kept getting the “sled can’t keep up error”, haven’t checked the voltage yet, I just cleared the error out with Stop, and set the “goto” to the line of code where it errored. Well, the sled just abandoned where it was supposed to cut and cut random huge circles above the work area.
This happened on a second design as well, this time it cut smaller circles in the work area after the “cant keep up error”. I had it set at 700 mm/min on XY, I dialed that down to 500 and will retry. Anyone else ever gotten these random circles and had the Maslow wander off? Thanks!
Does your gcode have R’s in it? the arduino does not (yet) support the radius code, but we are currently testing that. open your gcode in notepad and do a search (CTRL + F) for R. I had mine wander off once because of that. If you know the line number from webcontrol, you can click the gcode -> edit option and scroll down to that line number and see what the deal is or attach your gcode and I’ll look at it.
the R code was a long shot, but it is on my mind so I threw it out at you. I have coreldraw as well and I like that better than inkscape, but inkscape has a gcode generator extension which I use, but I think is overly complicated, yet very effective. I’ve been playing with easel and it is super simple to put in tabs, but I don’t like that it is cloud based.
I don’t know really know anything about dxf to gcode. You might try saving as svg and then using easel, estlecam, carbide create, camotics (good to simulate cut and see what it is doing), cambam, makercam, or one of several others (blender, fusion360, freecad). It is critical to make sure make sure of the units you are exporting so there are no scaling issues. Maybe one of those might be a better software path?
Thanks again for the suggestions. I’ll definitely try those other programs out, especially camotics, hadn’t heard of that before. I’ll let you know how things go, take care.
having the maslow cut circles when there aren’t any in the g-code can be the
result of the start and end point of a circle being too close together.
if you truncate digits, or the maslow looses digits because it can’t handle that
precision (the Arduino only does single presision numbers, not double precision
numbers, so it can’t handle more than about 5 digits) and the start and end
points become the same, that is g-code for cutting a full circle instead of a
tiny (probably un-noticable) arc
Thanks David, i’ll look into that as well. Is there a way to configure precision in the software to make sure its set to single precision? My workflow is CorelDraw save as .dxf > import into DXF2GCODE > export to gcode. Thanks again everyone!
Did you happen to try taking a picture of an object and importing into Solidworks to help define your entity? I’ve done this before and if you pan in really really
Deep sometimes there are circles (what look like points) that initially you cannot delete. If you pan in really deep you will see it’s random points that the sketch connected together.
Maybe these are somehow getting into the code? Just a thought as was an issue of mine when trying to use phone and picture import to help define and trace an object. In my case actually camera picking up wood grains in the pic.
if the start and end of an arc are the same point, that defines a circle. The
maslow is limited in the resolution that it can handle (and configuation and
pre-procesors can truncate more digits) which can lead to things that the CAD
thinks are tiny arcs turning into circles in the gcode.