3D carves can take a long time. One feature that would be good to have is to specify a job duration (e.g. 1 hour) and have g-sender split the original file into 1-hour jobs. At the end of each job segment, the spindle would park. And the next segment would start where it left off. I know you can do that manually but it would be nice if it could be automated. I also realize that job duration are estimates only so a job split into 1 hour chunks may take more or less than 1 hour. A workaround would simply to have a pop-up asking if you want to pause and park or continue.
I think this could be done now with macros but Iām not sure.
I like the plan. I like to keep my toolpaths seperate to just be able to do a quicky inbetween or just before thee time. I donāt like the mill running while Iām out of reach. Okeoke laserjobs, I run from the couch with a cupper, and low depth engravings with the mill too, but.. oh well you get the picture. Having an option to tell gsender to run on an egg timer could be usefull.
Yesterday I was stirring a paint canā¦ I had the urge to see if I could let the mill run this, you know, attach a stick and have it run circles, but I envisioned huuuge spills and world ending ohnoooooos.. I feel Iām going off topic again..
Where was I.
Not knowing if you use vectric, but i have found that vectrics estimates are prety close if you stick to the plan and not fiddle around with the speedsnfeeds in gsender.
You might be able to use the tiletool in vectric to split a job into components that take the approximate amount of time you see fit.
You know, just untill this gets implemented in gsender.
Yes, I start planning my toolpaths with that in mind. That feature could also be done within vCarve. Create your toolpath, select the time for each session, and vCarve creates the required amount of g-code files .
@Chucky_ott It is simple to do in VCarve. Not to say that you can split by some time factor, but you can easily split model carves into smaller chunks. Been there, done that.
I can see all kinds of issues getting gSender to do it, but since Iām not trying to program it, by issues are completely irrelevant.
I am soooo lucky the misses is out so she canāt accidentaly see your comment.
Iāll end up with the most expensive kicthen appliance in the history of poor guys.
A stirmill, a dishwashmill, a whipcreammill a milkfoammill and a burgerflipmill all in one machine. But that is not all, Jim! Put the kitchenmill vertical against a wall and you have the perfect spot to hang a towel.
The kitchenmill, now available at siencilabs.com -cue piewpiewpiew sounds-
When loading large files I often end up staring at a white screen due to insufficient memory. My PC has 32g but I still run into this problem. I created a python script (and compiled it as a standalone .exe) to split large gcode files so I can just run them sequentially and it works well.
The script I wrote is basic:
Splits a G-code file into āpartsā separate files.
Detects G20/G21 (inches/mm) automatically.
Keeps the header in every split file.
Splits near safe retracts (Z >= safe_z) if possible,
otherwise splits exactly by line count.
Each part ends with safe shutdown commands.
I am wondering if this functionality could be included in Gsender?
@jimmyartis Not only would it be a good idea for large files to prevent the issues you are having, it would be great to break down a job in shorter run time increments. For example, letās say you have a job that will last 6hrs but want to break it down in 2hr chunks.
@gwilki Grant, can you outline how you do this? Donāt go into details. Just a few basic steps would help.
I was researching this a bit more and found a reference to TAPE SPLITTING. You essentially edit the post processor (grbl in my case) and add a line that creates g-code files of a specific length. Easy enough to do but it is based on the amount of lines in the file. It has nothing to do with the time.
In VCarve, you can use tiling to divide a project into as many pieces as you want.
In re-reading the whole topic, I realize that none of these may address your issue. As I said previously, I knew how to split jobs, but not how to split them by time. I think that one issue would be āwhose timeā? As you know Vcarve will tell you the time of each tool path. Itās accuracy depends on how precisely you entered the parameters that it uses to do that. I donāt know how gSender determines run time, but I do know that more often than not, it bears no resemblance to the time shown in VCarve. Frequently, it bears no resemblance to the actual time taken when the job is finished. Iām not sure how that issue enters into any feature that Sienci could include in gSender in the future, but I would think that it would have some bearing on it.
@Chucky_ott Thatās the process that I tend to use. I realize, though, that it means that we need to guess at times. With some models, thatās not too difficult since they may be symmetrical. On those that are not, itās guesswork.
Tiling works well, but the time thing is still an issue.
