- All pins, which include limits, control command, and probe pins, can
now all be configured to trigger as active-low or active-high and
whether the pin has its internal pull-up resistor enabled. This should
allow for just about all types of NO and NC switch configurations.
- The probe pin invert setting hasn’t been added to the Grbl settings,
like the others, and will have to wait until v1.0. But for now, it’s
available as a compile-time option in config.h.
- Fixed a variable spindle bug.
- Rudimentary CoreXY kinematics support. Didn’t test, but homing and
feed holds should work. See config.h. Please report successes and
issues as we find bugs.
- G40 (disable cutter comp) is now “supported”. Meaning that Grbl will
no longer issue an error when typically sent in g-code program header.
- Refactored coolant and spindle state setting into separate functions
for future features.
- Configuration option for fixing homing behavior when there are two
limit switches on the same axis sharing an input pin.
- Created a new “grbl.h” that will eventually be used as the main
include file for Grbl. Also will help simply uploading through the
Arduino IDE
- Separated out the alarms execution flags from the realtime (used be
called runtime) execution flag variable. Now reports exactly what
caused the alarm. Expandable for new alarms later on.
- Refactored the homing cycle to support CoreXY.
- Applied @EliteEng updates to Mega2560 support. Some pins were
reconfigured.
- Created a central step to position and vice versa function. Needed
for non-traditional cartesian machines. Should make it easier later.
- Removed the new CPU map for the Uno. No longer going to used. There
will be only one configuration to keep things uniform.
- The `x` in `$x=val` would overflow when a value larger than 255 was
entered and passed to Grbl. This resulted with unintended parameters
being set by the overflow value. To fix, simply check for values larger
than 255 and error out.
- A G28/30 bug would cause it to move to machine coordinate [0,0,0] if
no axis words were sent. It was a typo in the new g-code parser. Fixed
and slightly re-written to be more consistent with the program flow.
- Updated the ShapeOko2 defaults based on testing on the real machine.
A little conservative, but it might change again after some more
testing.
- Now blocks ‘$$’ command during a motion, because the printout takes
too long and can starve the segment buffer.
- Probing cycle would drop into a QUEUED state, if multiple G38.2 are
sent. It would not honor the auto cycle start flags. To fix, the auto
cycle start state is saved at the beginning of the probing cycle and
restored at the end, since the feed hold it uses to stop a triggered
probe will disable the auto start flag. For now it’s a patch, rather
than a permanent fix.
- protocol_buffer_synchronize() also has a failure case. Auto cycle
start does not get executed when the system is waiting in here, so if
it’s in a QUEUED state already, it won’t resume. Patched here, but not
fully resolved.
- Fixed a problem with the “view build info” command. The EEPROM write
would do weird things and corrupt the EEPROM. Not sure exactly what
caused it, but it’s likely a compiler problem with an improperly
defined EEPROM address. It didn’t have enough room to store a full
string. To fix, the build info EEPROM range was increased and the max
number of STARTUP_BLOCKS was reduced to 2 from 3.
- Lastly, when a $I view build info is used for the first time, it
would normally show an EEPROM read error, since it wasn’t cleared or
wasn’t therein the first place. It will now not show that error. A
patch rather than a permanent fix again.
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.
WARNING: There are still some bugs to be worked out. Please use caution
if you test this firmware.
- Feed holds work much better, but there are still some failure
conditions that need to be worked out. This is the being worked on
currently and a fix is planned to be pushed next.
- Homing cycle refactoring: Slight adjustment of the homing cycle to
allow for limit pins to be shared by different axes, as long as the
shared limit pins are not homed on the same cycle. Also, removed the
LOCATE_CYCLE portion of the homing cycle configuration. It was
redundant.
- Limit pin sharing: (See above). To clear up one or two limit pins for
other IO, limit pins can now be shared. For example, the Z-limit can be
shared with either X or Y limit pins, because it’s on a separate homing
cycle. Hard limit will still work exactly as before.
- Spindle pin output fixed. The pins weren’t getting initialized
correctly.
- Fixed a cycle issue where streaming was working almost like a single
block mode. This was caused by a problem with the spindle_run() and
coolant_run() commands and issuing an unintended planner buffer sync.
- Refactored the cycle_start, feed_hold, and other runtime routines
into the runtime command module, where they should be handled here
only. These were redundant.
- Moved some function calls around into more appropriate source code
modules.
- Fixed the reporting of spindle state.
- Added a new source and header file called system. These files contain
the system commands and variables, as well as all of the system headers
and standard libraries Grbl uses. Centralizing some of the code.
- Re-organized the include headers throughout the source code.
- ENABLE_M7 define was missing from config.h. Now there.
- SPINDLE_MAX_RPM and SPINDLE_MIN_RPM now defined in config.h. No
uncommenting to prevent user issues. Minimum spindle RPM now provides
the lower, near 0V, scale adjustment, i.e. some spindles can go really
slow so why use up our 256 voltage bins for them?
- Remove some persistent variables from coolant and spindle control.
They were redundant.
- Removed a VARIABLE_SPINDLE define in cpu_map.h that shouldn’t have
been there.
- Changed the DEFAULT_ARC_TOLERANCE to 0.002mm to improve arc tracing.
Before we had issues with performance, no longer.
- Fixed a bug with the hard limits and the software debounce feature
enabled. The invert limit pin setting wasn’t honored.
- Fixed a bug with the homing direction mask. Now is like it used to
be. At least for now.
- Re-organized main.c to serve as only as the reset/initialization
routine. Makes things a little bit clearer in terms of execution
procedures.
- Re-organized protocol.c as the overall master control unit for
execution procedures. Not quite there yet, but starting to make a
little more sense in how things are run.
- Removed updating of old settings records. So many new settings have
been added that it’s not worth adding the code to migrate old user
settings.
- Tweaked spindle_control.c a bit and made it more clear and consistent
with other parts of Grbl.
- Tweaked the stepper disable bit code in stepper.c. Requires less
flash memory.