Hi, is there a way to tell the 1F to go to a specified x and y value.
Also can I make a 2nd home. Thanks!
Home will always be the Z axis all the way up, the X axis all the way to the left, and the Y axis as far forward as possible. You can’t set a second home, nor would you want to. Don’t confuse home with zero. Zero is something you define to your work piece and will change.
You can always write down specific machine coordinates and use MDI to return to the same position.
What is MDI? Is that something I have to manually enter inside the gcode or is it on the interface?
After homing you can move each axis in segments of. 5, 1, 10, and 100mm using the touch screen very quickly. Let’s say you want xy to be 200 x 200 - just touch the 100 button twice for each axis and you are there.
Is this what you are referring to?
Thank you. I’m aware you can do that but my main reason I want to do this is I’ve had to use the red button a few times and it would delete my previous x and y zeros (origin of my project). I want a way to start there again so I can just re run my a single tool path rather than do it all again
I think this would require having to go into the gcode correct?
This was my reply: Thank you. I’m aware you can do that but my main reason I want to do this is I’ve had to use the red button a few times and it would delete my previous x and y zeros (origin of my project). I want a way to start there again so I can just re run my a single tool path rather than do it all again
That is my point, once you have homed, pick a convenient xy 0 and set your router there. Place your piece corner at xy0 and mark the placement. I have grid lines at 10mm intervals to help with the placement. If something goes wrong and you need to start over you can easily duplicate the placement and bring the router right back to xy0
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I see that makes sense. Having a convenient starting point will allow me to get it back much faster. Thank you for the tip.
I thought… why?
then
Alex Zeller
said it best…
What are some of you guys thinking?
What do you do if the origin is in the middle of your piece instead of the corners?
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I mostly work with center… I don’t get it?
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I mean with Alden’s method it’s easy to reference the corner because you can put your piece at that spot using the marks (grid pattern) has has on his spoil board. My question is what if the origin is in the center of the piece and you can’t use the grid pattern because it would be covered up.
The quick answer is “Yes”.
The harder answer is… it depends what you are doing and why…
Some of my material isn’t square, so I usually go off of center, but others are doing repetitive things, some kind of absolute, so a common corner makes sense…
I’ll give you an example…
I am cutting this job right now…
the board is not exact, and I’m using a center point that I set at the beginning (homed the machine and set my center zero).
Now all I have to do is change my bits and Probe the height.
I’m about to change a bit now… my center is always set… once I probe it, I continue… then my final pass sets the outer boundary…
Where the material is on the surface is irrelevant, where my center is (or corner) is critical to the final product…
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If you hit the e-stop at any point you lose all coordinate systems and they’re reset to 0,0,0 based on wherever the stepper motors are at the time you hit the button. Once you recover you will need to home the machine to set your home 0,0,0 - absolute 0,0,0. The stall homing is good but it varies slightly from my experience +/- .2mm on each homing cycle which might be ok for many operations but not for others.
My suggestion if you need more precision would be to probe a corner of your workpiece so you have a solid starting point to recover from. From there if you want to use the center of the stock as your work 0,0 - move the spindle to that location. The controller display will now show a value for X and Y under “offset” like X = 10 Y = 20. Make a note of these values as they can be used to recover your work offset. Zero the X and Y. If you need to recover, probe the same corner you did before and then use the command G0 X(insert value) Y(insert value) (G0 X10 Y20 in this example) into the MDI screen, this will move you back to the work offset position - zero X and zero Y and you’re back to your start. You can also use the X and Y jog buttons on the touchscreen to move the required distance from the corner.
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Thank you! This is what I was looking for.
Well said, Derek. In VCarve you can find the offset to center by clicking on the center position in Job Setup and then measuring the distance with the measuring tool to the outside edge of x and y.
Thank you!
I’m starting to use the controller on the 1F to get it to the same point but the moments are in millimeter, is it possible to switch it to inches? I too have reference mark on my spoil board so I want it to match the intersection which is in 2 in increments. Thanks in advance!