Put the hammer down on the new GRBL CNC board from http://www.Panucatt.com last night. Hour solid of cut time taking 1/4" deep passes at 80IPM in Baltic Birch. 5 tool changes without hiccup. Feeling pretty good about the board itself but still not sold on GRBL.
The fact that if I use any of the provided methods of immediate machine stopping means I also loose all of my work offset data is cumbersome. With a complex project like this, where its possible to have a simple program mistake cause the for an immediate stop, its important to be able to return to a known point. With this project I was lucky in that I set my work offset from my work pieces edges, but you cant always do that.
Anyway for small machines, and less complex projects I think this board is amazing. Im going to be using it to convert a Denford micro mill from the Circa 97 CNC software and hardware to modern stuff I can run off a laptop. Exciting little project.
Using the GRBL g28 coordinate system to save the tool-path origin in nonvolatile memory solves most of these issues for me. But my GRBL does still loose the machine origin, in a few cases which I don’t fully understand. Frustrating.
So far, my fix for this is to ensure that machine homing is as repeatable as possible. I can re-home and, send g28 to get back to the toolpath origin in machine coordinates, and then rezero the toolpath coordinate frame, even after a power outage.
… But you have to save the toolpath origin with g28.1, so that it is there later when you need it.
Liytle off topic, but i noticed you have linear rails and i just bought my first set. If the bearings come off will the balls come out? Any idea would be helpfull.
