[109jb]

I have been using Grbl for a few years now on a CNC milling machine. Actually, I have 2 setups running.

What I can say about Grbl itself is that I am impressed considering what it runs on. I used to use a Chinese Nano clone, but found that the USB to serial converter chip they use (CH340) can at times result in errors with the G-code stream to Grbl. This is not a fault of Grbl, but specifically the CH340 chip. I have swiched over to an Arduino Uno clone making sure it is one that has the Atmel 16U2 USB to serial chip. The 16U2 has no problems at 115200 baud.

As for the user interfaces available, I agree that most are lacking in one regard or another. I tend to do a lot of things on my mill using MDI, and needed a GUI that would read a canned cycle and convert it to linear moves that Grbl can understand. I wound up writing my own GUI, which incorporates things like tool changes, a tool table, canned drilling and boring cycles, probing routines, etc. Unfortunately, some things happening in my personal life have prevented me from updating the program to work with Grbl V1.1. As it is it only works with V0.9. I use an old Netbook as the host for my GUI and it works well. I decided to write another interface to do all this stuff and be V1.1 compatible, but have not had time to finish it. On my machines I am still using my V0.9 GUI with Grbl V0.9. Hopefully this winter things will slow down enough for me to finish the new one. Probably by that time there will be a new version of Grbl and I will have to start over again. My GUI doesn't have a graphical backplot, because I'm not that good of a programmer, but my background in CNC starts in the 1980's when I made a living running VMC's, and back then nothing had a backplot. I don't really miss having one.

Overall I am very happy with the performance of Grbl. I have looked at the step signals using an oscilloscope and they are very good square waves. I have not had any issues in regard to Grbl controlling the machine. My machine is basic 3-axis with combined limit/home swiches and there are enough pins to handle this setup without issue.

A few thing I would like to do this winter is to add spindle control and convert my rotary table for use as a 4th axis. Grbl does have PWM for spindle control and it would be nice to have this. I have a few projects that the 4th axis would be good for. In order to use the 4th axis with Grbl you need to use an Arduino Mega 2560 and a forked version of Grbl, but it is doable. Actually, one of the forked versions is 6-axis capable.

[kfmut]

I used to use a Chinese Nano clone, but found that the USB to serial converter chip they use (CH340) can at times result in errors with the G-code stream to Grbl. This is not a fault of Grbl, but specifically the CH340 chip. I have swiched over to an Arduino Uno clone making sure it is one that has the Atmel 16U2 USB to serial chip. The 16U2 has no problems at 115200 baud.

Good point, thank you!