I’ve recently replaced the Arduino Uno board within the electronics for the Shapeoko2 with an Arduino Due clone
This is also a switch from the Grbl firmware to the G2Core (TinyG2) firmware.
copy of firmware and settings here https://github.com/HACManchester/Tools.Shapeoko2/tree/master/Firmware/g2core
Firmware update
There was a more recent Grbl firmware we could have used, but switching boards also provides some other advantages
The CPU is now a 32bit ARM instead of a 8 bit AVR which should provide additional speed for planning motion
also there’s a larger block of flash for storing the firmware.
One of the problems I was having with the older Grbl firmware is that the G54 code for zeroing the machine was sometimes being ignored
causing the spindle to plow into the material. This should hopefully fix that problem
There’s also supposed to be a feature to allow de-energizing the motors within chilipepr, however that doesn’t seem to be working at the moment
so I need to look into that one.
Other problems
Another problem I spotted recently while milling a design from Jake is that chillipepr seemed to be leaking memory during the running of the G-Code
Fortunately it’s possible with Tiny-G to restart the G-code from a given position.
Also the serial port driver that needs to be used to talk to the board requires disabling windows signing of drivers for Windows 10
which is a bit painful but I think shouldn’t crop up under Linux
I’ve got plans for setting up a new case which should hopefully sort out these problems
- Pi Zero with USB Wifi dongle on the back,
- Metal box 24V PSU currently used for the spindle, will be used to power the Stepper motors instead
- Metal box 48V PSU will be used to control the spindle, it has additional power and will allow the spindle to run at full speed.
- Separate circuit to act as a speed control for the spindle.
- possibly an Oled display on the front
- Additional USB ports on the back via a hub that we might be able to use for the other CNC’s such as the proxon
Or to add different heads in place of the spindle
The general gist, is that eventually you will use x2go to remote onto the Pi to use the CNC
This should allow it to run without leaving a laptop hooked up to it, and without monkeying with drivers.
Many Thanks
Richard