I’m sure this is easy and I’m just searching the wrong terms here - but is there a way to automatically move back to safe height when I stop a job?
As it stands, when I hit the stop job button, the spindle stops moving, but it stays in whatever current Z position it was cutting in, which causes obvious problems.
What am I missing?
Thanks!
@timarland I can’t answer your question, but I’ll ask a couple of questions to help those who would like to help you.
Are you stopping the job by clicking on the GUI stop button?
When I use that button, it’s because something is not right. Is that why you are stopping it?
What are the “obvious problems” that the current process is causing?
Thanks @gwilki!
Yes - stopping by clicking on the GUI stop button.
Yes - always because something is wrong. In my case, as I do a lot of board flattening it’s usually something where the piece wasn’t as even as I thought or I messed up z zero to begin with and the job is cutting too high or too deep.
In the case of cutting too deep, obviously that’s where the need/desire for the stop job to automatically jog the z back to the default safe height as until I can get my fat fingers over to the router and turn it off the bit is turning and burning or chipping in my work piece.
Part of what (I assume) is one of the gsender settings is after doing a z probe, z is jogged back to .740 - doing that when I stop a job would be ideal.
@timarland Tks much. I understand now what you are trying to do. Sienci techs monitor the gSender topic quite closely, so I’m confident that they will see this. I have no clue has to what it would entail to change gS to do this. They need to consider any unintended consequences for other users, too.
FWIW, I have my router and the LM controller on a power bar controlled by a paddle switch. When the stuff really hits the fan, I slap the paddle switch and everything dies. Of course, that also means that I’ve lost my zeroes, so I try not to do this often. 
If you are using any kind of controller and short cut keys, you could always link a shortcut key to a macro that stops carving and raises the router. Just a thought.
I don’t know of a way to make gSender raise the bit automatically but I do know a way for the router to turn off automatically. I have the IOT relay that Sienci describes.
I bought mine from here and I love it. It turns on my vacuum and router when using the router. I unplug those and plug in my air assist and exhaust when using my laser. Then I modified the post processor in Vectric to send M8 to turn on the relay on job start and M9 to turn off at job end.
Bear in mind that it only works to turn off the router when hitting the gSender stop button but not the physical stop button.
@_Michael That’s good info, Michael. I’m curious, though. In the situation being discussed, the gcode never gets to the M8 command. However, the relay will still kill the router from the Stop GUI??
I think that gSender must send the M2 command which does the following.
Change from Auto mode to MDI mode.
Origin offsets are set to the default (like G54).
Selected plane is set to XY plane (like G17).
Distance mode is set to absolute mode (like G90).
Feed rate mode is set to units per minute (like G94).
Feed and speed overrides are set to ON (like M48).
Cutter compensation is turned off (like G40).
The spindle is stopped (like M5).
The current motion mode is set to feed (like G1).
Coolant is turned off (like M9).
Last on the list is turning the coolant off and that kills the router. I just tested it again to make sure my info was good.
I’m away from my machine, but don’t forget about the Start/Stop G-code part of Settings:
Yeah, you can do that if you don’t want to change the post processor. Thanks for mentioning that.
This is all great info! I’ll check out start/stop gcode - should have figured there’d be something like that.
@_Michael that IOT thing looks pretty rad - might give that a crack too if I can figure out somewhere to connect it on the xcarve controller.
Thanks!
If you’ll study some of my macro code at the following link, you’ll find code for a safe Z move. Perhaps it will work in your case.
G53 G1 Z-0.8 ; SAFE RETRACT
I use the IOT on my Longmill and the M8/M9 commands in gSender. If I hit “stop job”, in gSender, my router turns off, but does not go to safe height. Clearly we have the same issue.
Thank you for posting this question. I’ve been pondering this issue for a while now with no success, due to a lack of effort.
I strongly recommend the IOT though. You won’t regret it. If nothing else, it will reduce the amount of burning and on occasion has saved my piece from unreliable damage.
In addition you can’t beat the convenience of not having to manually control your router and vacuum power.
Just answered another question about controlling a router with the IOT relay and I think now that gSender is the best place to turn the coolant and hence the router on and off because they added On Pause and On Resume which I can’t do from my post processor.
In case anyone is interested, or for future reference, I added some new documentation to our resources that discusses all of this now. If you have any comments or suggestions for the future please feel free to let me know:
