This is great to know. For when I have something with a loat of small cutouts and i’m not sure how it’s going to act.
If you’e using sheetcam, it has a PAUSE feature that’ll let you enter how long to pause after every cut. I have mine set to 5 secs and it works great. no editing required as it’s added to the post process every time.
So it basically cut’s, cuts torch off, pauses for 5 secs then continues to the next cut.
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I have used that also but I never tried to jog it out of the way to see what it would do. I’ll try that again and jog after the cut and see if it resumes.
Thanks
I haven’t tried jogging it afterwards either but it should continue the path if you do since it followings the coordinates from the gcode.
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It won’t let you jog, that’s the only downside to using the sheetcam method
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I did like the pause when I started, it helps with light gauge warping when cutting allot in the same area but then I found where you can set sheetcam up so that it doesn’t cut within a certain distance from the last cut so I started using that and adding the M06.
Thanks
you can also add an M01 below the M05 to pause before the next cut. I believe that will cut first, torch off, go to next cut and pause there until you hit cycle start again to cut the next part.
I was doing that at first before i found the sheetcam PAUSE. I would add an M01 after every 5 or so M05’s so it’ll cut a few pieces then pause at the end of the 5th one.
example:
M05
M05
M05
M05
M05
M01
and so on…
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I like the idea of it going to the next cut and then waiting, I may try that and see if that works better unless the torch has to cross the tip up to go to the next cut?
I’ll be off starting tomorrow so I’ll have a few things to try.
I also just ordered most of the stuff to add the z axis to my table, then it will have limit switches and I should be able to use the home function so that zero will be the same every time, hopefully. Like tooljunkie does.
Fun times ahead
Thank you for your input.
If you use M01 (Optional stop) then you can toggle it on and off inside of Mach3.
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I just finished adding the home/limit switches on mine using tool junkies videos.
The only thing with the homing part is that it’ll home to 0,0 but them add .5 inches of “space” between the switches and bearings and it calls that HOME at 0,0 (this is called machine home). only way i figured out how to move the X and Y closer to the switches afterwards is to add code to the REF ALL HOME button, then still have to zero out the table.
Watch his PORTS and PINS tutorial and you’ll see what i’m talking about when he homes the table.
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I just ordered everything today except for the proma thc, so that gives me a few days to watch his videos again.
What I was hoping for what to be able to home the machine then go about 2 inches up and 3 inches over and zero there to use that for the corner of the project, then if it crashes I can home it again then repeat the 2 inches up and 3 inches over and re zero and be at the same starting point.
It took me a while but I did finally figure out that there could actually be a machine home and project zero that were not the same numbers.
Correct me if I’m thinking about this wrong.
Thank you
yes that can be done. I used this video to figure out code can be added to have a different start point after it homes. I had to back up the carriages about .5 inch to be closer to the switches after it homes. I need all the real estate i can get on this table.
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That sounds good, all of the steel that I have is 18g 19*31 so I don’t have to hog the side.
Thank you
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also, if your stuff hasn’t shipped yet, you might want to consider looking at this video and getting that power supply instead of the one listed on his original parts list video in case you want to modify the BOB. It’s a 24V/5V PS.
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looks like I made it in time, got the other one ordered and looks like it will be here the same day.
Thank you
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My posts show M5, not M05. Not sure why that is, but I’m not too worried about it because my machine is working fine.
I just tried the M1 trick and it is awesome! I think I will use it on large surface areas so I can reset tip height to account for material warp/machine misalignment, etc.
I found that putting M1 right after M5, caused it to stop at the end of the cut, prior to moving to the next pierce location. So I put M1 at the end of the line after the M5’s, which pauses after the machine moves to the next pierce location. Like this:
N65 M5
N180 G0 X2.0385 Y-20.431 M1
N185 M3
Great tip, thank you!
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I do have a question… when it is paused at M1, is there a way to manually jog the machine? I couldn’t figure out how to jog, it seemed like my only option to get it to move was resume cycle…
When I use sheetcam on big cuts, I’ll break up the cuts into several layers and add a m1 code snippet in between each operation. This gives me a break for the duty cycle. I add a 2 second pause after cut on art stuff so I can have time to hit space bar if there is a tip up. Seems to work fine. Seems like a lot of work to pause the machine between every single cut.
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I have done this also but I didn’t ever think to hit the spacebar for tipups, I’ll try that today and see if I can still jog and then hit cycle start and move on.
A simple thread about sharing one way to do something and now I have learned several different ways to accomplish the same thing. Now to figure out which way works for me the best on each project that I cut.
That’s why I love this forum, many great ideas coming from very smart and knowledgeable people.
Thank you all.
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Most controllers will read M03 and M3 as the same command. I haven’t used a machine that requires all G and M codes to have 2 numbers, but I imagine that old CNC conrtollers do require that.
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