General Information

Live Jogging allows for direct control of the head location. There is a certain risk in using this feature, especially for CNC milling machines, as it will move the head, without compensating for any objects in the path of the head. So use caution when enabling Live Jogging and make sure free movement is possible along all axes.

On Laser-plotters it allows (for instance) for selecting a point approximately in the center of the design to do auto-focus (Z-axis or bed aligning)

It also allows (both on Laser-plotters and CNC Milling machines) to more effectively locate the correct position of the material, and either adjust the position of the design or the material.

 

Usage

To enable Live Jogging, you will first have to home the X and Y axis:

This will need to be done using the Home All button in the Control Panel (Using a macro for the homing will NOT enable Live Jogging!):

Once you have done Home All, the Live Jogging is enabled:

You can now turn on Live Jogging by enabling the switch:

Once enabled, there are – aside from the standard Jog buttons – two additional ways to control the head’s position:

• To move the head to a location on the grid, press the ALT key (PC) or META key (Mac) and click the desired location
• To move the head along each of the axes, press ALT/META and the cursor keys (Left/Right for X, Up/Down for Y) or CTRL and ALT/META with Up/Down (for Z).

The move to grid function (ALT/META + Click) works directly:

 

 

The feature to Jog along XYZ axes using keys only works when you have clicked somewhere in the Control pane that is not a button or control itself and it follows the same predefined distance buttons as the on-screen jog buttons do:

(Remember that after clicking one of the above to set the distance travelled per button press, you will need to click the panel background next to these buttons to make the cursor keys work for Live Jogging!)

 

Warrnings and notes

WARNING: Neither the Jog to Position (ALT/META-Click) and Jog along axis (ALT/Meta-cursor key) provide protection for either obstructions or end-stops! Be careful using this functionality!

NOTE: The current implementation of Live Jogging disables the functionality as soon as you start a job. You can only re-enable Live Jogging by deleting the generated Gcode and re-homing (Home All) the head!

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