Fairly new to CNC routing and gSender. I’m not sure if I’m using the Jog Control correctly. When I hold the X or Y jog, the spindle jogs until I release the button. Hower, when I do the same with the Z jog, the spindle continues to move when I release the button. Most importantly, when this happens, the Jog Stop button isn’t selectable. I already ran the bit into the spoil board. I had to hit the emergency stop button on the machine. Am I doing something wrong, or is there a setting I need to change? The machine is a Fox Alien Masuter Pro. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
@BrianV I’ve moved your question the the gSender/question category.
I know nothing about your machine, but in general, jogging Z should behave the same as jogging in X or Y. You mention “button”. How are you controlling gSender?
When I say “BUTTON,” I’m referring to the gSender interface. The circle with the line through it in the middle of the X-Y directional arrows.
I’ve had what I call ‘runaway jogging’ happen but it’s been a long time. I’ve had it happen on at least the X and Z axes, I can’t remember it happening on the Y but it might have.
I’m not sure what causes this runaway but I think it’s important to have a good USB cable because if some communication is lost between gSender and grbl that could cause this problem.
My solution for the Z might not be what you want to hear but as I consider runaway Z to be the most dangerous I try not to use continuous jogging with Z downward jogs. Instead I use the three jog modes, rapid, normal and precise I think they are called. I use metric so for me it’s 10mm down with each click until I can’t go another 10, then 2mm down and finish with 0.1mm down. It’s not perfect and may take a little longer but it’s safer IMHO.
For some background I’m a hobby programmer and I have played around with making a toy G-code sender and continuous jogging, at least with grbl v1.1 is a complex process. I suspect that with grblHAL and newer 32 bit hardware it is probably better but I haven’t looked into it.
For grbl v1.1 the 8 bit hardware limits what the grbl developers can do with the firmware as mentioned in their documentation.
Unfortunately, the new Grbl jogging is not a complete solution. Flash and memory restrictions prevent the original envisioned implementation
Long story short is that a single click on a jog button sends a single command to grbl whereas holding the jog button fills up the planning buffer with commands and if something goes wrong all bets are off.
Like I said I’m not a professional programmer but that’s my understanding of things.
That’s what I ended up doing. Single click the Z jog. Thanks for the help. It’s a brand new machine. Wonder if I should ask for a new control box.
I’m not sure. When I’ve had this problem is was a random thing and only happened once in a while. If it always happens there might be something wrong but I’m more knowledgeable about the software side of things than about hardware problems at the circuit board level.
Your very welcome for any help I may have provided and I hope you have a good time with with your Fox Alien CNC.
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