Hi Charlie,

Hope you're well. I posted here last year about Parallels/VM support... Good news - I recently got my Windows desktop PC upgraded and running again, and I've been playing with the PixelCNC trial and enjoying it so far.

The main roadblock now is getting it to generate G-Code that will work with my machine - specifically, I'm running an Inventables Carvey using Easel & its G-Code import function. I have not been able to get it work with any of the provided post-processors - though I haven't tried them all, I believe Carvey is a GRBL-based machine, so I tried both GRBL presets which yield the following error in Easel:

Invalid G-code
Line 3: G20 G90 G91.1
The file contains invalid G-code syntax
You must use one of our official post-processors in order to import external gcode.

Do you have any plans/ability to support a PixelCNC Easel post-processor? Inventables currently has two official ones, for Vectric and Fusion 360 - I tried taking a look at those and comparing to the PixelCNC post-processors to see if they were easy to translate, but they seem to be vastly different formats. You can find their post-processors here: Easel Downloads

I can also send you some valid Easel/Carvey G-code generated by the F360 post-processor if that would be useful.

Thanks again for taking a look. Really impressed with what you've done with PixelCNC so far :)

-Dan

Ah, I've found their G-Code spec, which may be a useful resource: 
Easel G-Code Spec

As a Carvey user, FYI the "special note for Carvey" section is a big annoyance of mine, but the post-processor can ignore this particular detail & consider it the user's responsibility to place their design outside of the "danger zone" - that's what the F360 PP does.

Hi Dan,

I have created an Easel post that will be included in the v1.44a release soon. You should be able to run your machine using a 3rd party G-code "sender" if it's running GRBL, rather than using Easel. I personally use a custom version of grblControl - which is now known as Candle. I had to modify it to have better support for inches but I believe that Candle now has proper inch support, I should really go check it out and find out for myself. There are a lot of other good free programs out there that should work fine too.

The issue you're having pertains exclusively to Easel and not the Carvey. You should be able to run G-code exported with a Mach3/GRBL post on there just not with Easel unless it's formatted in its specific way (which the new Easel post for PixelCNC ensures). The situation with Easel that you'll want to look out for is the fact that it's a 2.5D CAM solution which means that any kind of relief carving etc probably won't load/simulate correctly but it might still be able to send it properly to the machine. I don't know if this is 100% true, I haven't tried loading 3D toolpaths into Easel yet.

Thanks for the feedback! :)

Charlie

Hi Charlie,

Great to hear that Easel support is in the works! I look forward to trying v1.44a soon.

I have done some reading about using other G-code senders with Carvey before, but have thus far been reluctant to try it because A) it voids the warranty (which is nearing its end anyway) and B) some forum posts indicated that, at least for Universal G-Code Sender, a code change + custom build was necessary because the Carvey identifies itself as "gCarvin" rather than "grbl".  Candle may not have this issue, so if I get more adventurous, I'll see if I can get Candle + Carvey to work together, but I may just wait until 1.44 for now...

> Easel ... 2.5D CAM solution ... probably won't load/simulate correctly but it might still be able to send it properly to the machine

Yep - so far Easel has handled all of the 3D carving toolpaths I've thrown at it from Fusion 360 with no major issues. It doesn't have simulation/3d rendering of the workpiece but it shows the toolpaths and seems to work fine as a G-code sender which is all I really need it for. However, I don't like the idea of being locked into it long-term, so I'll be looking for another sender eventually.

Thanks again for your help.

-Dan