I just finished building a laser cutter using a smoothie board. I previously built a 3d printer with a smoothie board so I am some what familiar with the smoothie board.
I am having trouble getting the laser cutter to work properly. it seems to slow down to at certain parts of the cut and returns the following error messages during the cut “raw G-Code line NO %“123” could no the parsed”
I have updated the firmware to the cnc version.
Another issue that I dont seem to be able to resolve is the homing commands to work. If I send the g28 command the laser goes back to what it believes to be zyx0 but does not go to the limit switches. If I send the g28.2 command the system locks up.
Any suggestions on how to solve these issues would be greatly appreciated.
Site would not allow me to paste the link but here is the backend part thats needed. 6zCpCSRB
I was able to figure out the parsing error by removing the % at the beginning and end of the file. The laser movement is not smooth. Travel is very slow around the parts that have curves but rapidly moves along the straighter sections of the part. This means that some areas of the paper are cut and others are not based on the amount of time the laser stays in one spot.
I confirmed that the firmware is the CNC version. I enabled grbl_mode true in the config file. when I enter the command $H in the bCNC terminal it locks the system up. Same code in Pronterface gives me a alarm lock.
I very much appreciate you helping me out on this.
The Junction deviation was set to 0.05, I also tried it at 0.005 and it did not seem to make a difference. The G code was generated using the Fusion360 laser cutter path generator with Smoothie board as the per processor. I don’t see anything in the gcode that would change the speed to make the cut non smooth. The curved motion is very slow and the straighter sections move quickly.
I think I just figured out the problem. The speed F### in the Gcode file is only set for G0 and G1. G2 and G3 seem to default to a lower speed. I added the F### to the first G2 and G3 line and it now cuts at a constant speed.
Actually no that’s not normal behaviour.
Can you make a very small gcode with different gcodes and very very different feedrates for each of them, and see if this is really what is going on ?
Last night I experimented more. This was much better but not the fix that was needed. Using the same Gcode file and running the laser cutter without changing position you can see that the slow down is somewhat random in nature and occurs at different places along the cutting path. I am going to try another smoothieboard that works in a 3d printer I have to see if this is board related or something else causing the problem. I have noticed when moving the gantry manually it randomly slows down and moves very slowly.