I’ve made my first homing mistake today.
I had home successfully and carved. But then I had an error while probing and (as a consequence?) the machine was no longer homed.
I simply did not noticed because I was scrolled down to the G-code part of the screen.
Then I tried to carve a very long piece and boy did it hurt when it slammed at the end of Y axis while still trying to go further. The noise! Can’t be good for the machine.
Could you implement a warning if one is not homed?
I understand that it is not always necessary to home the machine so a dialog box appears too strong but could you add a warning message next to the play bouton if the machine is not homed? Because it is simply not visible when you’ve scrolled down to the G-code…
It is a given that you should ALWAYS home your machine.
If true then the controller should refuse to move the machine until you have homed it. It’s basic UX really.
But you’re completely missing the point of my post: the machine can become un-homed after errors in probing. I understand why it would un-homed in that case but if you’re scrolled down to see just the probe buttons and the G-code, the fact that it has become un-homed is not visible.
There should be a warning visible in that area of the screen, with the current UX it’s too easy to miss.
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I never home my machine unless I have a big piece to cut or laser. Not saying you shouldn’t home everytime but it’s not necessary.
I agree, when you work on a small piece I don’t see why you would need to home. But to each his own.
However, to clarify the feature request, I was working on a large piece, therefore I had homed. There was a problem with the Z-probing and the machine became un-homed. However, I was scrolled down on the G-code, and the fact that it had become unhome was nowhere on the screen!
So I started my long cut confident that it was safe… and clearly it was not.
I believe that a warning should be visible next to the “play” control for G-code if the machine finds itself un-homed. Just a reminder.
If you have not homed, because you know your cut, a warning is not blocking. But if you have home and the machine has become un-homed, it’s a life-saver!
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This is very similar to my feature request for some way to quickly check the limits of a job prior to committing it.
You can avoid your issue by setting your Z axis high and cutting your file ‘in air’. The machine would still crash the Y axis but you wouldn’t destroy the stock. You may even have been able to pick up that the Y axis location was “off” before the crash.
The down side is that air cutting is it’s time consuming to run the full job 2x. Hence my feature request.
-Mark
It is good practice to home your machine before each cut, but it is not required. grbl can place the machine into an alarm state that can only be cleared by homing first – Buildbotics does not seem to have that feature and simply relies on soft limits entirely. I think some stall sensing during a cut might be helpful too, but that would get super sketchy if you are doing high speed milling in a dense material - I wouldn’t want to trigger a false positive.
-Tom