PCB Auto-Leveller for ShapeOko / TinyG

[DanMc]

@Louis V: have you tried AutoLeveller
I've never tried it, but it's supposed to work well with Mach3

[LouisV]

@Louis V: have you tried AutoLeveller
I've never tried it, but it's supposed to work well with Mach3

Thanks! I'll give that a look.

[Xaracen]

I have been using JarretL's ChiliPeppr GRBL fork with CP's Autoleveller to map out 30mm copper squares for an engraving project, and am getting very good results on my mark 1 Shapeoko.

As usual it is for an art project for my son, who will need rather a lot of engraved copper over the next few months.
We have agreed that engraving 8-point Times New Roman is do-able if I can maintain consistent cutting depth, and probing the copper surface first is pretty much essential to achieving this.
Also sharp engraving bits! Some piccies will follow soon, I hope.

I need to get into almost a production line mode for this, and among other things have now ordered the parts I need to stiffen up my x-axis gantry, along with a load of new engraving bits.

But I really wanted to say that I appreciate the work that John Lauer and Jarret Luft have put into the GRBL version of ChiliPeppr CAM, I am very pleased with it.

Mike

[jlauer]

Hey, thanks. That's really great to hear and I appreciate the kudos. I'm sure Jarret would too. Glad things are working well.

[jarretl]

That is great to hear And yes, please post some pics of your work!
I'm still waiting on some PCB's to give the autoleveller a more thorough testing, so if you run into any issues PM me here or my email is on the grbl widget in chilipeppr.

[jlauer]

BTW, the Auto Leveller in ChiliPeppr only adds Z values to each line of Gcode that contains G0's and G1's. So, keep in mind that if you have a long line that stretches your entire object, you're not following the contour very well on that line. You're better off breaking that line into smaller segments so there's more points that can be raycasted onto the warpage.

[Xaracen]

Here are some photos of my recent experiences with engraving copper using ChiliPeppr with Jarret's GRBL variant, which allowed me to use the auto level function with my Shapeoko-1.

First up is a 30mm copper plate being engraved. The green wire is the ground connection for the probe, which is connected to the top of the spindle, so that the probe tip is actually the engraving bit tip.

Engraving in progress!

Copper plate in vice.jpg (63.07 KiB) Viewed 2151 times

Next is the screenshot of the AutoLevel results for the above plate.

Probe Results for the above plate before engraving.

Probe Results for the cleaned engraving.jpg (40.13 KiB) Viewed 2151 times

And the last one is the cleaned up engraving. My son thinks legibility would be improved by infilling the cuts with black paint, so we did that after I took these photos.

Cleaned up engraving. This is 8-point Times New Roman.

Cleaned engraving 2.jpg (92.67 KiB) Viewed 2151 times

This is just sample text for now. As ever, the Gcode for the engraving came from Skorch's F-Engrave utility, so my thanks to Scott for his continued interest in this program.

Mike

[jlauer]

That looks really great. Nice work. The auto-leveller was done for PCB's but you clearly found it useful for this project and I'm thrilled how it came out.

[Xaracen]

The probe works on slate, too, if I wet it first, though I haven't used the ChiliPeppr leveller on slate yet. Will try that tomorrow, actually. The only problem now is that I am wearing out my engraving bits, I am on my last one and it isn't too fresh now, either. Replacements won't arrive for a whole 4 weeks!

Cuts filled with black paint.jpg (46.9 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

Early test, not autolevelled.jpg (44.89 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

The gap in the first line was due to the odd ordering the text ended up in during F-Engrave's processing, I suspect due to the actual order I typed it in my drawing program. I stopped the engraving before full completion due to the almost completely faded parts in the lower lines.

Mike

[Dan211]

Hello, I am new to CNC machining and i have bought a Shapoko 2, my plan is to soon etch pcbs using it. I am trying to figure out how to use this autoleveler with a GRBL controlled machine and I am having problems. So when I try to do a test probe using the chilipeppr.com/grbl autoleveller my machine moves and when I connect a wire from pin 11 (z limit) to ground grbl just locks up and says "ALARM: Hard/Soft Limit [Reset to continue]". I have to manually send $X to it for it to reset, the data is also not collected and the probing is not continued after I reset. Am I doing something wrong or is the problem somewhere else? Thanks for your help in advance.