GRBL software

[Dominic Galligan]

hi I recently bought a chinese 2417 cnc machine which came with CopperCam software. After much going back and forwards asking so many questions and getting very little response. I had go back through the store incognito to get answers. But yesterday was told they give GRBL software with there machines, which we did not great work chinese. Because I do not need to engrave circuit boards with CopperCam. They have given me this but when I download it and go to open it up it says there,s no program attached so can't open up.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ctapl2swugs8y9r/2417software-new-1206.rar?dl=0

Can any GRBL software work the machine or do I need to use this software only? Would this work? http://zapmaker.org/projects/grbl-controller-3-0/ Any suggestion would be greatly recieved otherwise we have a large door stop (http://rd.bizrate.com/rd?t=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2FB009E1VFCI %2Fref%3Dasc_df_B009E1VFCI4654977%3Fsmid%3DATVPDKI KX0DER%26tag%3Dshopzilla0d-20%26ascsubtag%3Dshopzilla_rev_275-20%3BSZ_REDIRECT_ID%26linkCode%3Ddf0%26creative%3D 395093%26creativeASIN%3DB009E1VFCI&mid=184056&cat_id=25000300&atom=10699&prod_id=&oid=4569397091&pos=1&b_id=18&bid_type=4&bamt=68f11f10bedad085&cobrand=1&ppr=e6101f2a455bc88d&rf=af1&af_assettype_id=12&af_creative_id=2973&af_id=615103&af_placement_id=1&dv=c8f71fe44d0d0824d45019158253f8da) or paper weight.

[William Adams]

Grbl is a an opensource machine control program which has formed the basis of most freely available firmware options (up through v0.7 it was available w/ an MIT license which allowed re-used w/o any real requirements or legal hoops). v0.8 and later have been available under a more restrictive license in terms of code re-use --- still free / opensource software.

The v1.1 update is scheduled to have some significant improvements for laser use, and the worst case should be that you pull the control board and replace it with something which currently works well for a laser and is well-documented, say a Smoothieboard (I use an Azteeg X5 mini w/ a Viki 2 LCD on my 3D printer and it works quite nicely).

Zapmaker hasn't been active for a while now, and his software hasn't had a binary release readily available for a while now --- if you wished to d/l the code and compile it yourself it should work okay --- it is possible to lock a given comm / control app to a particular communications chip (Carbide 3D does this w/their Carbide Motion board / software), but Grbl doesn't have much room to check on things --- that said, it would be possible to use an unusual communication speed or other setting as a compile time option which would require puzzling out before connecting).

The Shapeoko community maintains a list of Communication / Control programs which work w/ Grbl (and a few other opensource firmware options) --- there's also a commercial software page which lists some additional options, a few of which are focused on the laser and there's a new set of pages for Grbl 1.1 on github. The Chinese lasers are very popular over on Reddit (and moderately common here) and on Reddit there are pages of information on rebuilding them for safety and reliability and improved performance.

While it all seems very complex and intimidating, the opensource firmware options have made this sort of thing (I usually do routing and 3D printing --- haven't been able to justify a laser yet) quite simple and very reliable. It's just a matter of assembling a toolchain which works.