First, let me say that this looks like a really awesome controller and I do not yet own one. I’ve been wanting a hobby cnc for years. Prices have made that difficult. This appears to be a great solution at the price ($99 would be the sweet spot I think, prices have really dropped for controls over the years.) All my scrounging is coming together and I hope to purchase one of these before the end of the year.
The wiki states:
The homing sequence progresses through each axis provided in the G28.1 block in turn – i.e. it does not home on multiple axes simultaneously.
Axes are always executed in order of XYZABC. The order they occur in the G28.1 block has no effect.
I’m a machinst by trade, and on machines that have an automatic home button, Z homes first. I imagine that most people will be using this as that function. The problem with this is that when X and Y move, if there is any engagement between part/fixturing and spindle you’ll have a crash. Z homing first is a safety feature and protects from dumb mistakes (which I make from time to time).
I recommend the order is changed or make this a parameter that can be changed. At the least a note should be made that a G28.1 Z0.0 should be performed before G28.1 X0.0 Y0.0 unless there is a good reason not to.
It’s also too bad that this doesn’t support G81 (spot drill), G73 (chip break drill), G83 (peck drill) canned cycles. All these can be straight coded though, so it’s not that big of a deal, just makes hand adjusting the code easier.
I’m still reading through all the documentation and if this is addressed elsewhere I apologize. Also, I have enough AVR experience to get myself in trouble, but not out 🙂 , and may attempt to hack the firmware for some of this when I hopefully get one of these boards.
.
