I’ve been working on building up a CNC machine and just started using the Smoothieboard for some testing. It seems that Pronterface can communicate with the Smoothieboard but other programs seem to have trouble. I’ve tried UGS (Universal GCode Sender) and ChilliPepper but I’m not having much luck with my testing.
What would it take to get the board to work with more software, like Mach3/4 or UGS? Are there any plans for this or am I just configuring things incorrectly?
I also wan’t to build a CNC router, but didn’t thought about what software to use so far. But anyway I will try to help you if possible!
Can you describe a little better what “other programs seem to have trouble” means exactly?
From my limited research and testing it seems that the programs developed are assuming that you are running GRBL. You can usually perform simple machine commands (X+/-, Y+/-) but if you open a gcode file and try to run the program you will get an error saying that GRBL isn’t ready.
Mach3/4 use plugins so commercial products like the ones from Gecko have files that you can download and install in Mach. I don’t know what is involved for this but it seems like this would be a good thing to pursue. Having something like support for Mach3/4 will allow this board to compete with other boards like the Smoothstepper.
Another option is to add support in the firmware to respond to GRBL requests so the many programs that were developed for GRBL will work with the Smoothieboard. This too I think should be fairly easy once we know what GRBL responds with. Since it is an open source project that information is available.
Adding Smoothie support to UGS is trivial and is currently being worked on ( it expect to get “hello I’m GRBL” and gets “hello I’m Smoothie,”, and that’s about the extent of the problem … )
You can use Octoprint, Octocut, Pronterface, Smoothie’s web interface, etc … in the meantime.
This thread is pretty old but I thought I would add my CNC mill experience. I was using LinuxCNC with a hacked up/modified “Chinese Blue board driver”. I have moved up to SmoothieBoard and Pronterface over the past week and so far it’s been good. The only negative is Pronterface not fully supporting an “inches” mode. If I send a @G20 manually SmoothieBoard switches to inches but Pronterface’s steps in the X/Y/Z jogging GUI are way to big. Pronterface goes from stepping 0.1, 1, 10, 100 millimeters to 0.1, 1, 10, 100 inches. I stared at the Python source of Pronterface to see how I could modify these step values but can’t figure it out.
That aside I am happy with Smoothie and Pronterface. I have contacted the Universal G-Code Sender app developer about joining his project as I have a lot of Java experience and could help out there.
Thank you to the Pronterface help. I will investigate ranging from 0.01 to 10 instead of 0.1 to 100.
For CNC mill users in the United States using inches is *almost* required. Most end mills and router bits made and sold in the US are in inches. Most materials (wood, plastics, etc.) are sold in inches/feet. ALL end mills, bits and materials sold at local woodworking and hardware stores is in inch dimensions.
Personally I don’t care whether I use metric or English units except for having the option to run down to the local Home Depot to buy more materials or bits.
I know I can convert my GCode from inches to millimeters in post-processing but it’s just an extra step that I could miss or screw up
Glad to hear it is.