Explore Features Enterprise Blog

Clone this wiki locally

Frequently Asked Questions
chamnit edited this page 5 days ago 29 revisions
Please feel free to contribute more up-to-date answers or questions!
This is probably the number one question, and the answer is: "It depends on who you
ask."
When Simen Svale Skogsrud first sat down and wrote Grbl in 2009, he named it after a
bigger version of a computer mouse. It's small, useful, and doesn't do much other than
what its designed to do. So, if you ask him, it's pronounced like "gerbil". If you ask Sonny
Jeon, the developer since 2011, he'd say it's pronounced 'grr-ble', because he was
teased too many times by his wife when working on the project. If you ask Edward Ford
of ShapeOko, he'd probably say 'garble', even though he knows better. In any case,
pronounce it however you'd like. We love hearing the various interpretations of our name!
See our Compiling Grbl for a list of recommended ways to do this!
Links to pre-compiled Grbl HEX files are located down near the bottom of the main front
page in the README area.
Yes, it should. The compiled HEX file is in hexidecimal format, not binary. So it can be
somewhat larger than the 32K flash limit on Arduinos. No more than about double the
32K, though.

grbl / grbl

Clone in Desktop
How do you pronounce Grbl!?
Compiling Grbl
How do I compile Grbl and upload it?
Where can I download a pre-compiled Grbl HEX file to flash onto
my Arduino?
The HEX file is larger than 32K that the Arduino will hold. Will it still
upload?
Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
1 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM
Please check the Wiki help pages for details. If they are not up-to-date, please notify us
or update them if you found they were in error or have another method. Thanks!
No, grbl fits on the ATmega328P without having to overwrite the bootloader; you will still
be able to upload Arduino sketches after flashing without having to re-burn the
bootloader.
The Arduino bootloader takes a second or two to boot up before Grbl initializes. During
this time, the stepper enable pin is LOW, which is enabled, before Grbl finishes its
initialization and sets the pin to HIGH to disable the steppers. This brief moment makes
your stepper drivers susceptible to electronic noise, so if your driver step pins have
enough noise to falsely indicate a step, your steppers may start moving erratically.
We are looking into this, but this may be an unavoidable problem with straight-up
Arduinos. There a some solutions however. You can try to locate the source of the
electronic noise and remove it (a fan too close the other electronics). You can place a
pull-up resistor on the stepper enable line to disable the steppers during the boot-up
process. You can also remove the Arduino bootloader altogether and install Grbl through
the ICSP header, which requires specific hardware to do it.
When the Arduino board is USB powered and the stepper drivers have their own logic
voltage supply, don't forget to connect the ground of both circuits.
Yes, there is a very simple way to write all of your settings at once. Just copy and paste
Flashing Grbl
How do I flash Grbl to my Arduino?
Does grbl overwrite the Arduino bootloader?
Connecting Grbl
My CNC moves erratically when I boot up my Arduino! Why does it
do this?
Configuring Grbl
Writing individual settings is tedious. Is there a way to speed this
up?
Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
2 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM
the current settings to a text file, meaning the whole print-out of the '$$' command with
labels and all. Grbl will ignore those labels because they are inside '()' comments.
Change the values after the '=' characters to whatever you need. Save the file and stream
it to grbl using the 'simple_stream.py' streaming script in the '/script' folder of our repo.
(Or, you can use the other streaming script stream.py with the -s settings-mode flag.)
Once it's streamed, all your settings are updated!
Grbl's homing cycle assumes you have set up axes directions correctly. So on a standard
mill, this means the positive directions for each axis is: z-axis spindle moves up, y-axis
table moves toward you, and x-axis table moves to the left. Once you have this setup, the
homing cycle defaults to searching for the limit switch all in the positive direction, starting
with the z-axis and followed by the x-axis and y-axis together. If you happen to place one
of your limit switches on the other end of travel on one of your axes, then you can use the
homing direction mask to have it search in the negative direction. LinuxCNC.org has a
great diagram on their website describing the proper coordinate system setup.
After a homing cycle, Grbl sets the machine coordinate frame in all negative space. This
is common on professional CNC machines that is mostly due to tradition and being able
to identify what you are looking at when both machine and work positions are displayed.
If your limit switch is not on the positive end of the axes (and you've inverted the homing
direction), Grbl will set the machine position to your -max_travel setting. If you find this
so annoying that you can't stand it, you can always have Grbl set the machine position to
zero, regardless of where your limit switches are. You will need to uncomment the
#define HOMING_FORCE_SET_ZERO in config.h, re-compile, and re-flash. That's it!
The homing pull-off issue is almost always caused by a user wiring in normally-closed
limit switches, rather than normally-open switches. Or, the user has inverted their limit
switch setting incorrectly for their type of switch. The reason Grbl defaults to requiring
normally-open limit switches is purely for the fact of wiring simplicity. Arduinos have a
nice little internal pull-up resistor for normally-open switches that help prevent the pin
from frying when the switch is closed. With normally-closed switches, users MUST wire in
an external pull-down resistor with their switch. This extra step is usually forgotten and
Homing cycle isn't working right! The movements are all going in
wrong directions!
After homing, why are some of my machine positions negative and
not zero!?!
When setting homing pull-off to something greater than zero, why
is it crashing INTO my limit switch?!
OR why does Grbl require normally-open switches?!
Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
3 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM
results in a fried pin. If you have normally-closed switches and have wired in pull-down
resistors, all you need to do is to invert the limit pin setting to tell Grbl that you are now
using normally-closed switches.
Grbl communicates through the serial port, just as in the Arduino IDE. You may connect
to it via any standard serial terminal program (i.e Coolterm) at 115200 baud (9600 for v0.8
and prior). Once you are connected, you should be presented with a short message
indicating the Grbl version and settings how-to. Just type valid g-code commands
followed by an enter and Grbl should respond with an ok or an error: message. Note:
You won't see any character echos as you type commands to Grbl.
Streaming g-code programs to Grbl may be done by a simple call-and-response method
through the serial port. Every command followed by a return is responded to when Grbl
is ready to receive another command. See the Using Grbl wiki page for more details, as
there are multiple streaming scripts and GUI's available to do this for you.
You would think that just uploading a file to Grbl would work, but it won't. This
functionality requires some kind of serial flow control to indicate to the computer when the
receiver's(Grbl) serial read buffer is full and when it's ready to get more data. The
Arduino's hardware flow control lines are hardwired to reset and re-flash the Arduino, not
for flow control. XON/XOFF software flow control is not officially supported by Arduinos,
but they used to work on older Arduinos. This was due to a recent switch in the Arduino's
USB-to-serial emulator chips, from FTDI to Atmega. The idea was to allow for people to
flash their own firmware onto these emulator chips for their own nefarious needs, where
FTDI chips were a closed-platform. This switch inadvertantly removed the FTDI's
XON/XOFF software flow control support. As far as we know, there is no push to bring
XON/XOFF flow control back. Although, since this firmware is now open-source, it may
show up if someone does it or badgers the right people.
Using Grbl
How do I connect and start using Grbl?
How do I stream a complete g-code program to Grbl?
Why can't I just upload a file to Grbl? Or I swear XON/XOFF flow
control used to work!
My stepper drivers require a time delay between the direction pin
and step pin settings! (Or I'm noticing that my steppers drift after
many many direction changes.) How do I configure this/fix this
problem?
Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
4 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM
This problem comes from Grbl's main stepper algorithm. It sets the direction pin
immediately before the stepper pins, which may not occur with enough time in between
for certain stepper drivers to acknowledge a change in direction. This can cause a slight
stepper drift after many direction changes. The Grbl master branch has an experimental
compile-time option that creates a user-specified time delay after the direction pin is set
and before the step pulse is initiated. This is done by enabling another interrupt (Timer2
compare). However, since it does add another interrupt, there is a chance that this can
adversely effect Grbl's high-end performance (i.e. high step frequencies or complex
curves), but this has not been thouroughly tested to verify this. If everything proves to be
solid, we will consider adding this feature in later releases. So, please report any
successes or problems with this feature! There is also a hack/work-around without
needing to re-compile. The Grbl invert mask setting not can not only invert your direction
pins, but also your stepper pins as well. So instead of being normal low, they can be
normal high. Since most stepper drivers acknowledge a step by sensing only a rising(or
falling) edge and the other is ignored, you can create a virtual direction pin time delay.
Note that now your Grbl pulse microseconds settings will now define this time delay and
you will no longer have any control over your step pulse time length (but this shouldn't
matter since your stepper drivers shouldn't care.) Although there has been reports that
certain stepper drivers don't like to be held normal high for prolonged periods, but it
doesn't hurt to try. :)
There can be a lot of reasons for this, but the most common is electromagnetic
interference. If you have AC power lines or your stepper motor wiring near the logic wires
or USB cord, the electro-magnetics from these 'high' power lines can cause the logic
lines to spike occasionally. This leads to weird connection problems, freezing, etc., etc.
Make sure you route these clear of each other and if you can't try routing them at a
90deg to each other (works with ethernet cables, should work here as well). Another
solution can be placing a small capacitor in parallel with your logic lines creating a high
frequency low-pass filter. This will even out some of those spikes. Also, check for
grounding. If your setup is poorly grounded, ground loops can cause the logic input
voltages to be unstable. Make sure you star-ground wherever you can, especially your
motor drivers.
In the past, users reporting this problem has typically been caused by too many devices
on a shared AC circuit, poor grounding, a vacuum motor too close, or a logic line too
close to a cooling fan.
Also, if you are dropping lines when streaming, this could be caused by a problem with
USB-to-serial drivers on particular computers or environments (Java). It's been reported
Grbl is acting very weird. Dropping connections, freezing, dropping
lines. What's up?
Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
5 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM
that the Java-based Universal GcodeSender can drop lines (although reported to have
been fixed recently), where the Grbl-supported Python streaming script does not. Please
try using the supported streaming script as comparison if you are experiencing this
problem.
Grbl tries to follow the NIST NGC/RS274 v3 standard for numerical control, aka g-code.
EMC2 and Mach3 follows this standard very closely as well. Click the link to download
and read the g-code standard document. Some of the NIST standard g-codes are a bit
out-dated, so we also use some of the LinuxCNC.org g-code definitions in these cases.
LinuxCNC.org also provides great documentation on their g-codes. G-codes M-codes
Other codes
While we follow the NIST NGC/RS274 v3 standard, this is actually not completely
standardized between all existing CNC machines and manufacturers. Numerical control
is pretty old, arcane, and predates MS-DOS. In other words, it's a mess. There have been
pushes to standardized it, like by NIST, and it has been successful for the most of
common g-code commands. Yet, there are a few g-codes that are not standardized, like
the g-codes G28/G30, G92.X, etc. It's a goal of Grbl to follow a published standard so
that people may build off of it, so that not to muddy the g-code waters even more.
Yes, in a way. The NIST standard only cover the basic functions and some of those are
out-dated. There are some really useful g-code functions that other CNC machines and
manufacturers use that aren't covered by NIST. We picked one, LinuxCNC, which is user
supported, open-source and familiar to hobbyists already. So we think that just as long
as we stick to one, everyone's happy.
This comes from a problem of how the arc are defined in g-codes. In radius mode R,
solving the path for a complete circle or semi-circle will cause severe numerical round-off
problems that are unavoidable. This can lead to an error in the tool path. In fact, NIST
G-codes
Where are g-codes defined? What do each of them do?
Why are some of Grbl's g-codes a little different as on some other
CNC machines?
Then why do you use some of LinuxCNC's g-codes rather than only
the NIST standard? Are you muddying the g-code waters?
Why would you separate a circle into multiple arcs? Not just draw a
full circle?
Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
6 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM
guidelines state only use R mode for arc angles from 0- 165 and 195-345 degrees. Some
CNC manufacturers actually don't allow users to draw a complete circle to avoid this
problem altogether, limiting users to either a maximum 90 or 180 degree arc motions only.
It is good practice to seperate all of your arc motions into 90 or 180 degree motions.
However, incremental arc mode I,J does not have this problem, but it's still good practice
to separate your arcs.
This has to do with EEPROM writing and how it automatically shuts down all interrupt
processes while it's writing, including the serial interrupts. These pauses can happen up
to 20 milliseconds, which means that a serial character can be lost within that time
period. The G10, G28.1, and G30.1 commands all write to the EEPROM the coordinate
offset parameters so that they are persistent between sessions. In practice, you almost
never need to update these in a g-code program, since they are performed during
machine setup and typically hand-coded. If you do need to stream these commands in a
program for some reason, there unfortunately isn't really a way to get around this
problem. If you come upon a good solution, please let us know.
Grbl stores only a few things in EEPROM. The '$$' main settings array, G54-G59 work
coordinate offsets, G28/G30 pre-defined positions, $N startup-line strings, and the $I
build info user string.
Grbl seems to be acting weird when streaming when there are G10,
G28.1, or G30.1 commands in the program. What's going on?
With this EEPROM read/write issue mentioned above, what data is
kept in EEPROM?
Status 2014 GitHub, Inc. Terms Privacy Security Contact

Frequently Asked Questions grbl/grbl Wiki GitHub https://github.com/grbl/grbl/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
7 of 7 10/25/2014 12:32 PM