Sorry this should probably be multiple posts but…
I want to go from a LR2 to LR4… will there be an upgrade kit out sometime this winter? What would need to get upgraded? I have a joystick hooked up to LR2 marlin to jog and it’s incredibly useful… is that a thing with the new boards and GRBL? Can you do mesh levelling with GRBL or should I stick with Marlin if I need that?
There’s a conversion list here in the docs.
https://docs.v1e.com/lowrider/#update-and-conversion-info
You have to click the blue area to expand the info and show the tables
Thanks Mike! Looks like I can source all the parts locally and you can’t do mesh levelling on GRBL so I’ll be going with Marlin… I have a SKR 1.4 turbo board lying around from an abandoned 3d printer upgrade so I’ll pick up an aluminum plate and start on the XZ pieces.
Question from curiosity: Why use mesh leveling instead of surfacing the table?
I found it isn’t accurate enough for certain joints especially across a full 8x4 sheet. Small things like wood swelling or clamping the edge can cause slight changes in height which can cause a problem when your dado or rabbet suddenly isn’t the same the depth across the entire sheet… even small errors can beome quite visible on some projects. I don’t usually bother probing on through cuts. It can also be handy if the top surface of the board isn’t 100% flat and you don’t want to bother surfacing it for whatever reason.
I would be very interested to see some full sheet projects that require that sort of precision!! We don’t actually see many large projects, none that really push a Z accuracy enough to need probing over surfacing. They must be super cool!!
Exactly what I was thinking!
I do think this is fascinating. Is there anything like a beacon or beacon contact that works with sheet goods (that would be awesome!)? If you probe, do you use a fixed whole sheet pattern? Or do you probe your work area for a given project only? How many points do you typically use? So many questions!
I find this super intriguing.
Technically speaking the arcade cabinet could be done just by cutting the slots extra deep but they are not through slots so it was nice being able to get them the right depth. On the stool you can see in the first screenshot how accurate the rabbet is:
I also did a custom cabinet for a soda stream with a big CO2 tank underneath with slots in the butcher block top to hold the sides and having a consistent depth kept everything level but I don’t have pics of that.
I just probe the area I’m cutting. I use the bottom two prints here… I just slip it over top of the cutting bit, probe, then slip it back off. There is also a spreadsheet in there for mapping the flatness of your spoil board / stock.
o.k. this needs more than just thingiverse!!! Maybe even a youtube, that looks like it is something no one has but you! 
Are you using it with marlin? or just manually probing, filling in the excel and determining a depth?
Oh that does look cool. I don’t care for Marlin, but I use Klipper on my printer - and this could be an interesting use for it on a CNC. Mind blown - thank you.
You don’t need the spreadsheet… like it mentioned in the thingiverse details you just connect the probe and run something like:
G29 L100 R1100 F300 B2400
Where LRFB are the parts you want to probe ( you have to have bed levelling enabled in firmware). It will probe various parts in that square and automatically adjust your Z using that until you reboot. I can’t remember how many points I probe it’s not too crazy since usually there is some kind of consistent slope to things. It’s pretty painless once you get it all setup.
Ohh,…yeah, I don;t think you will need any of that with a LR4. The lr1-2 was short lived because of the unsupported X rails. The Lr3-4 is going to blow your mind. Surface the table and be done with it.
My issue wasn’t really with the machine just the tight tolerances of some of the joints… that stool rabbit joint for example would have a visible gap if each piece were off by 0.1mm which I would more than get just from humidity swelling and clamping the goods.
I can not even expect my Printed parts to work with those sorts of tolerances. You are doing that in wood?? Those stakes are too rich for my blood. I love that you are doing it though!!!
Yeah… I could have finished each piece on the table saw with a dado blade but it would have been the exact same hassle there with test cuts until I got the tolerances exact. At least this way I have a quick and easy system to do it every time now.
I am just amazed you were getting that kind of tolerance out of an LR2 at all! You will absolutely be blown away with what you can get from an LR4!!!
