How do I move the spindle manually?

X-Carve Tips and Tricks
1

I’m a newbie and finished my first practice carve. How do I manually move the spindle up and away so I can remove my work piece? I can’t seem to find any arrow buttons or anything like that like there is when you find your zero point in the carve set-up.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Tony Hirschenberger

2

Welcome Tony!! I just hit the carve button again and use the arrows. When I have the spindle out of the way, I just hit the “X” in the top right.

Drew

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3

It’s a design flaw in Easel. AFTER a carve, you have to select ‘Carve’ again just to move the spindle/carriage? Makes no sense.

I’d rather see positioning buttons shown in the concluding pop-up that allows you to immediately move the spindle out of the way.

3 Likes
4

I raise my bit and turn the X Controller off. After a short wait, I GENTLY push the carriage back out of the way. I was told that with the power off and a slow, gentle push, this was okay. Am I risking damage?

5

Do you have homing switches installed?

If yes:

  • Do a homing cycle
  • Jog (by using the jog panel) to a conveniant parking spot / out of the way
  • In Easel->Machine Inspector->Console write G28.1 and press Enter

Carve like you normally do but next time you want to get it out of the way simply write “G28” in the Console and it will scoot over.

Parking spots G28 and G30 - homing is a prerequisite.
With homing you can also have a persistent work zero if need be

6

Thanks Haldor. I do have homing switches and will try that. Much appreciated.

7

I will definitely try that next time.

8

No, but I’d recommend using G28 and G30 in the way @HaldorLonningdal described.

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9

I use a Mac Mini. I run a program called QuicKeys. I programmed the G28.1 and G30.1 to move the spindle to specific locations. When a carve is complete, I simply press F2 or F3 to quickly move it out of the way, to the back of the carving area.

Easel allows you to enable beta features, etc in the machine settings, why not have an option to assign a specific key or keystroke combination to a GRBL command? ie G28 or G30. Basically, giving us macro commands like other programs do.

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