I like the jackpot board so far so good. Love the ability to be wireless and multiple devices options.
My understanding is that we can’t utilize the full capabilities of any cad/cam software like Easel, Easel cabinetmaker, Vcarve or an that I am aware of to control the LR4 with the Jackpot.
So in case I am missing something, is there any control software that works with it other than WebUI? I would love it if Easel would be that software… especially as I plan to purchase the Cabinetmaker part.
Or, alternatively and this is the least desirable, is there a control board that works “out of the box” that the Jackpot be swapped with so the LR4 can be controlled by the most popular softwares available?
ADDITIONALLY, as the LR4 sits built following the yellow brick road, what is the fastest speed the machine can operate … this is specifically in reference to the 1/4” bit roughing cut when doing 2.5D relief carving.
Last time I checked, Easel used a very simple set of g-code commands that work with Marlin. There is a good chance it would work with FluidNC as well. Note, you cannot talk directly to FluidNC. You need to save the g-code file and use some sort of g-code sending solution to send the file to your Jackpot board.
The machine can be controlled by any board with 5 drivers. All it is, is 5 stepper motors. The jackpot/web interface stores all the gcode on an sd and runs similar to a 3d printer. You run the file and it is in control. The upside is you can completely disconnect once its running, the down you cant line by line change things if needed. You can only abort and restart.
Jason, I believe (and probably wrong) that the issue is being able to be controlled wirelessly. As Ryan has reminded me, the job file sits on the sdcard in our jackpot board and is accessed and ran by our WebUI (i.e. press start) and thats it, the board controls the job from there based on the gcode. Having a program like Easel control the machine does seem a bit backwards now that it was pointed out to me in that giving control to an exterior program would allow for potential error if feeding all that gcode in a streaming fashion, whether wired or wirelessly. Having gcode on the board and being directly ran by the board to the steppers is the surest path and the most efficient, and I am now a believer in this process.
Once my job file is correctly created (by whatever means) and placed on the sdcard (by whatever means), the job will run exactly as programmed without any chance of ‘third party errors’
For me it was a mental hump i needed help getting over. Sure Easel is a fancier GUI but now that I have created the jobs in Estlcam and had some success running the job as prescribed (gcode on sdcard controlled by jackpot), I feel I have been let out of my own mental prison.
I miss, dearly, the ability to start anywhere in the gcode. See the machine have an issue, fix the problem, restart a few steps back and finish vs abort and start from the beginning. You can’t do that in the sd method.
That’s fair. I’ve messed with line numbers a bit but it’s on my list to investigate more. I think you can get Estlcam to put line numbers in the gcode. So, it would at least be able to show you how far it got. Then you could manually modify the gcode to remove the previous line numbers.
Details: Allow FluidNC to use line numbers in gcode. To use line numbers, set this to true. Put line numbers in the gcode with N, like N100. The line number that is currently being executed by the motion planner will be displayed in the status reports with Ln:100. If there is no line number information in the gcode, it will report Ln:0.
I have thoughts about creating a WebUI v3 extension to automate that so you specify the starting line number and it creates a new gcode file to run. It would also be nice for it to list out the sections so you could specify a starting section instead of a line number as long as you label them nicely in Estlcam (or whatever CAM you are using).
Just today my x stuttered for a second, fortunately i was standing next to it and could kill it. 10 minutes left of a 2 hour cut. It was finishing the cutout of the entire part, chose enough i finished by hand.
Prior to the jackpot i was using planet cnc controller, you could pause, rehome if needed, then a right click on any line and you had the option of going straight there and restarting. I stumbled across that, LOVED that feature. You could shut down entirely, go on vacation, have 30 power outages…power back up and resume anywhere if you made a note of what line you were on.
im in for testing, every time i need to fix something because of a broken bit or else, i have to get inside the vectric software i use and manualy erase already cutted parts and redo the gcode
You need to use Estlcam as a controller as well with different hardware. The controller part can jump to lines, objects etc. Needs a computer to control it as well though.
Instead of kludging the WebUI, perhaps this would be a reasonable ask of FluidNC proper (e.g. provide hooks to start gcode execution at a specific line number. )
Maybe get really fancy and allow pausing and jumping.
This capability is already present in some of the references that FluidNC models behaviors on (e.g. LinuxCNC has had this for ages.)
I’d throw in a little money if there were such a thing as a feature bounty. Hell, I’d throw in a little money if the WebUI got some capability for this.
I’d want to do some proper investigation before asking about getting that into FluidNC itself. They do like to follow what LinuxCNC does but in this case FluidNC is outside that paradigm to work like that. There are pros and cons to running gcode from an SD card.
Perhaps a feature to start at a specific line number would be ok. I’d imagine you could get stuck in an edge case like if the line number was in a loop.
I like to play on the WebUI side because I at least know how to do things there. Even if that solution isn’t the final one, it’s at least good for experimentation.
This is pretty far down my list at the moment. Too many projects and ideas, too little time.
