Yesterday I did a test with a whiteboard and a marker, I had a vector drawing, imported it into Estlcam and used the automatic functions to generate the paths to “engrave” the image.
So far so good, but when I ran it on the MPCNC it seemed to accelerate and decelerate for every line segment. For example, let’s say there is 10cm long line that curves slightly, and it is made from 5 line segments, it would draw the line in one go, but every 2cm it would almost stop and then speed up again.
It doesnt lift the marker from the board between the line segments, so I’m pretty sure they are connected, and there were no hard turns, only soft curves…
I’m sending the Gcode from Repetier host to a Ramps board with the Marlin dual endstop firmware. Increasing or decreasing the feedrate in Repetier doesn’t change the behaviour, so I’m pretty sure it’s the Gcode.
Is this a setting in Estlcam I have to change to connect the line segments in an engraving?
I am curious to see some of the gcode. But I doubt that is the issue.
It sounds like your acceleration numbers are really low in the firmware. I know you are using dual endstop firmware but did you edit any numbers for acceleration?
The next thing that comes to mind is your connection speed from repetier host to the board. If that connection is slow the. It will send gcode commands to the board very slowly. In repetier host in printer settings-connection what are your settings for Baudrate and another I can’t remember… something like send ok after each line…
Aaryn, I don’t think its the Baudrate, I’ve done other things with lots of small movements and it didn’t slow down then.
What’s the recommended acceleration setting? I think I left it at the default. But if I increase that I think it will just shake the machine harder, since it will still stop and start at the end of each line segment…
I just copied the acceleration settings from one of Ryan’s pre-configured Firmware copies. I know they were lower than the default Marlin settings but they were not crazy low. But if you are already using one of Ryan’s firmware copies then this should already be set.
I think it would be helpful if you showed a YouTube video of the behavior. You can upload the video as “Unlisted” then just share the link here. In the video it might be helpful to see the commands as repetier host is sending them to the board. You can view that in repetier by showing advanced settings then something like show log or something near the bottom.
Otherwise you could upload the gcode (or a small section of it) that we can look at or test on our machines.
If you can, it may be worth trying running the gcode from an SDCard (can just run the cut in the air).
I had what sounds like a similar issue found out it only happened when using the USB, but running the gcode from SDCard worked smoothly - ended up swapping out my arduino and now it’s smooth through usb as well.
