Newbie questions on how to cut my first project

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Hi everyone. I’m very excited to start cutting my first project after finishing calibration. I found the folding chair on the community garden as a first project: Fold Flat Chair

A few quick questions:

  1. Are there instructions or “best practices” for running existing g-code? The only instructions I found on the site were how to upload gcode.
  2. During calibration (without a bit) I lowered the z-axis all the way down and defined home. I’m assuming I need to reset this based on how far the bit extends beyond the collet?
  3. Is there a way in the file to see the general dimensions of the project (so I know how big of a piece of wood to get) and the general starting location (so I know where to position the sled).

Thank you everyone for your help.

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Running existing gcode can be tricky because you would need to have the exact same wood thickness as the person who generated the gcode originally. That gcode for the Fold Flat Chair is probably for the original Maslow and the 4.1 is about 3x faster so it’s going to cut quite slow. There is no harm in trying (you should be able to just upload it to the machine and go) but you are probably better off making fresh gcode. Making it easier to share, generate, and upload gcode to the machine is one of my top priorities, that’s why I’m working on Abundance which should make all of that pretty painless.

Yes, you will want to lower the z-axis down until the bit touches the surface of the wood and press the “set z home” button on the main screen. Note that it’s different from the “Set Z-Stop” button in the settings.

That’s an interesting question. There isn’t right now since most folks are cutting projects that they designed, but that could be a great feature to add!

This video might help you out:

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Bar wrote:

That’s an interesting question. There isn’t right now since most folks are cutting projects that they designed, but that could be a great feature to add!

this ties in to the travel frame idea that has the machine travel the square
around the project.

note that this will require interpreting the gcode to dee where it goes (not
just relative moves, but where does an arc go, not just it’s endpoints)

David Lang

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