This is likely the last major change to the v0.9 code base before push
to master. Only two minor things remain on the agenda (CoreXY support,
force clear EEPROM, and an extremely low federate bug).
- NEW! Grbl is now compile-able and may be flashed directly through the
Arduino IDE. Only minor changes were required for this compatibility.
See the Wiki to learn how to do it.
- New status reporting mask to turn on and off what Grbl sends back.
This includes machine coordinates, work coordinates, serial RX buffer
usage, and planner buffer usage. Expandable to more information on user
request, but that’s it for now.
- Settings have been completely renumbered to allow for future new
settings to be installed without having to constantly reshuffle and
renumber all of the settings every time.
- All settings masks have been standardized to mean bit 0 = X, bit 1 =
Y, and bit 2 = Z, to reduce confusion on how they work. The invert
masks used by the internal Grbl system were updated to accommodate this
change as well.
- New invert probe pin setting, which does what it sounds like.
- Fixed a probing cycle bug, where it would freeze intermittently, and
removed some redundant code.
- Homing may now be set to the origin wherever the limit switches are.
Traditionally machine coordinates should always be in negative space,
but when limit switches on are on the opposite side, the machine
coordinate would be set to -max_travel for the axis. Now you can always
make it [0,0,0] via a compile-time option in config.h. (Soft limits
routine was updated to account for this as well.)
- Probe coordinate message immediately after a probing cycle may now
be turned off via a compile-time option in config.h. By default the
probing location is always reported.
- Reduced the N_ARC_CORRECTION default value to reflect the changes in
how circles are generated by an arc tolerance, rather than a fixed arc
segment setting.
- Increased the incoming line buffer limit from 70 to 80 characters.
Had some extra memory space to invest into this.
- Fixed a bug where tool number T was not being tracked and reported
correctly.
- Added a print free memory function for debugging purposes. Not used
otherwise.
- Realtime rate report should now work during feed holds, but it hasn’t
been tested yet.
- Updated the streaming scripts with MIT-license and added the simple
streaming to the main stream.py script to allow for settings to be sent.
- Some minor code refactoring to improve flash efficiency. Reduced the
flash by several hundred KB, which was re-invested in some of these new
features.
- Completely overhauled the g-code parser. It’s now 100%* compliant. (*
may have some bugs). Being compliant, here are some of the major
differences.
- SMALLER and JUST AS FAST! A number of optimizations were found that
sped things up and allowed for the more thorough error-checking to be
installed without a speed hit. Trimmed a lot of ‘fat’ in the parser and
still was able to make it significantly smaller than it was.
- No default feed rate setting! Removed completely! This doesn’t exist
in the g-code standard. So, it now errors out whenever it’s undefined
for motions that require it (G1/2/3/38.2).
- Any g-code parser error expunges the ENTIRE block. This means all
information is lost and not passed on to the running state. Before some
of the states would remain, which could have led to some problems.
- If the g-code block passes all of the error-checks, the g-code state
is updated and all motions are executed according to the order of
execution.
- Changes in spindle speed, when already running, will update the
output pin accordingly. This fixes a bug, where it wouldn’t update the
speed.
- Update g-code parser error reporting. Errors now return detailed
information of what exact went wrong. The most common errors return a
short text description. For less common errors, the parser reports
‘Invalid gcode ID:20’, where 20 is a error ID. A list of error code IDs
and their descriptions will be documented for user reference elsewhere
to save flash space.
- Other notable changes:
- Added a print integer routine for uint8 variables. This saved
significant flash space by switching from a heavier universal print
integer routine.
- Saved some flash space with our own short hypotenuse calculation
- Some arc computation flash and memory optimizations.
- G38.2 straight probe now supported. Rough draft. May be tweaked more
as testing ramps up.
- G38.2 requires at least one axis word. Multiple axis words work too.
When commanded, the probe cycle will move at the last ‘F’ feed rate
specified in a straight line.
- During a probe cycle: If the probe pin goes low (normal high), Grbl
will record that immediate position and engage a feed hold. Meaning
that the CNC machine will move a little past the probe switch point, so
keep federates low to stop sooner. Once stopped, Grbl will issue a move
to go back to the recorded probe trigger point.
- During a probe cycle: If the probe switch does not engage by the time
the machine has traveled to its target coordinates, Grbl will issue an
ALARM and the user will be forced to reset Grbl. (Currently G38.3 probe
without error isn’t supported, but would be easy to implement later.)
- After a successful probe, Grbl will send a feedback message
containing the recorded probe coordinates in the machine coordinate
system. This is as the g-code standard on probe parameters specifies.
- The recorded probe parameters are retained in Grbl memory and can be
viewed with the ‘$#’ print parameters command. Upon a power-cycle, not
a soft-reset, Grbl will re-zero these values.
- Moved ‘$#’ command to require IDLE or ALARM mode, because it accesses
EEPROM to fetch the coordinate system offsets.
- Updated the Grbl version to v0.9d.
- The probe cycle is subject to change upon testing or user-feedback.
