Machine setup

Clicking on the green “carve” button for the first time will prompt you to do “machine setup”:

Or if you have already used the program before, it is possible to reach the “machine setup” step in the “Machine” menu, where you can click “set up your machine”:

The things to select for your machine will then depend on your mahine type:

x carve style CNCs with GRBL controllerx carve style CNCs with economy controllerworkbee style CNCs

If your CNC is an x carve style with the “x controller” style GRBL controller, then enter these elements in the drop downs:

And click “confirm settings”. Then it will take a moment to communicate with the controller.

If your CNC is x carve style with the economy controller, then enter these elements in the drop downs:

And click “confirm settings”. Then it will take a moment to communicate with the controller.

If your CNC is a workbee style, then enter these elements in the drop downs:

And click “confirm settings”. Then it will take a moment to communicate with the controller.

Then you need to tell the controller what direction it needs to go to correspond with the movement command that it will receive when using the program: You see arrows next to X, Y and Z. Click these arrows and check if the machine is making the movements as indicated by the arrows.

If on one or more of the axis it’s making inverse movements, then no worries! That is exactly what this machine setup process is for! Just click “no” next to an axis in that case, and you’ll meet this screen:

Click the first option that it is indeed not moving the right direction. A next screen pops up:

Click the first option to change the grbl settings of that axis.

As soon as all axis are moving like the arrows indicate, then just click them all “Yes”

And click “continue” to move to the next screen:

Choose manual spindle control from the dropdown list and click “save spindle preferences” to go to the next screen:

Depending if you have homing switches, you may click “Yes” or “No”. The same is true for the next step of “Z probe”.

Even if you have homing switches or a z probe, it is possible that you first need to check and set the “steps per mm” or the “soft limits” as described in the next steps before being able to do this homing and probing sequence correctly. Then just do the next step(s) first, and re-do this machine setup later.