Can the OF be operated manually? I am new to cnc and have a project in mind where I would like to be able to cut where I move the machine. Thank you for any tips/advice.
Hey Trey,
yes, you can enter g-code commands one by one into the MDI field of the Tabbed Section of the Control Page.
In manual mode, you can also move the machine with a corded gamepad or a wireless gamepad, or with the arrow keys on the Jog Tab.
Welcome to the forum!
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Thank you very much, appreciate the tips!
I think someone, who has more time and talent than myself, needs to come up with a CNC game which uses all manual movements. Something between the board game “Operation” and the “Snake” game? Perhaps you have to move the machine, with the bit spinning of course, around a maze-like path, all the time avoiding obstacles and without crashing!
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Hi Trey - welcome to the forums. As @Aiph5u indicated, you can manually enter gcode if you want. I did a full video on it a few weeks ago if you are interested.
-Tom
Hello, I came across this thread via a Google search for what I want to do with the OF. I watched your video, cyberreefguru, and that was helpful – thanks. I will be teaching a HS class that involves a CNC running students’ gcode scripts, which they will probably write as a text file in word processing app, like Google Docs. So rather than one manual gcode command at a time, can the OF import a text file and run a sequence of gcode commands? Thank you… 
Hey Brian,
the Onefinity CNC machines are stand-alone machines, which means, all you need is a USB stick with your g-code file on it. You stick it into the machine, open the file, and let the machine execute the g-code toolpath.
Unfortunately since the underlying operating system on the Onefinity is outdated and does not have exFAT filesystem support installed, which is usually the formatting of new USB sticks greater 32 GB nowadays, usually you need to reformat your USB stick with NTFS or FAT32 or use a smaller one that comes with FAT32 formatted. USB sticks formatted with ext2/ext3/ext4 are also supported.
exFat would be supported natively with Linux kernel 5.4 but I have no idea if or when Onefinity will switch to a newer version of the underlying OS.
Although there exist g-code editors, you only need a plain text editor to write g-code. After saving the file, you rename the file extension from .txt to .ngc, and the machine will recognize and accept the file.
In ancient times all g-code was written by hand. Nowadays you usually use CAD/CAM program to export a toolpath as g-code file.
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