The Control screen

Control is where the machine is driven: jogging, homing, setting work zero, probing, and loading, starting and watching a program. Everything is on one screen, so you set up the work and watch the cut in the same place.

In portrait, from the top:

1. The position readout — the work system, WPos / MPos, X, Y, Z and the machine state.
2. The machine view — the bed, the toolpath and the tool, with the command rail down its left side, the file banner across its top, the view cube at the right and the view toggles at the bottom.
3. Location and Jog, side by side.
4. Run Information and Notes.

In landscape the cards move into a column on the right and the navigation dock floats under the machine view; see Portrait and landscape.

Position readout

The readout shows the active work system (such as G54), the WPos / MPos choice, each axis's work and machine position, and the controller's state tag. Tap the work system chip to switch systems. Everything it shows is explained in Reading the position display.

When a remote browser is paired, a strip under the readout says so; see Remote access.

The command rail

The rail down the left of the machine view holds the job controls at the top and the machine tools below. A disabled control stays in its place, drawn faint, so the rail never rearranges itself under your finger. A small triangle in a button's corner means it has a second choice: tap the triangle, or long-press the button.

Job controls

The rail changes its job controls with the current state:

• Run opens the three choices without sending motion. Choose Start to start the loaded program after the start checks. Start reads Start Project when a whole project is loaded and Continue for a job picked up by Job Recovery. It needs a loaded program and no job running. If a check fails, a drawer says what and nothing moves; see Starting: the checks.
• Stop ends the job at once. It cannot be resumed. See E-STOP, feed hold and reset.
• Unload removes the loaded program. It appears only while a program is loaded and no job is running.
• Run → Outline explicitly traces the loaded job's footprint at safe Z with the spindle off. Loading a file never starts it. See Checking the footprint.
• Run → Air Run sets the next run to cut in the air: Z raised clear and the spindle off. This choice does not start the job; reopen Run and choose Start when ready. See Rehearsing with Air Run.
• Mesh switches mesh levelling on or off; its triangle opens mesh probing. See Mesh height maps.
• Overrides opens the live feed, rapid and spindle drawer. It needs Enable Speed Override on in Settings → Sender. See Feed and speed overrides.
• Single Block arms line-at-a-time running; Step and Back then replace Hold and Resume. See Single-block running and resuming after a move.
• Hold pauses the job with a controlled stop; Resume continues it. Hold reads Hold ▪ S Off when the spindle has stopped too, and Resume shows the spindle speed while it spins back up.
• On a controller that can park (grblHAL), Hold then parks the machine once it has stopped: the tool pulls up out of the cut and the spindle stops. While parked, the state tag reads Door, the controller's name for that state. Resume brings the spindle back up to speed, returns the tool to the cut and carries on.
• Return and Resume anyway appear when a resume was refused because the machine moved while held; see Single-block running and resuming after a move.

When the controller is in alarm with no job running, the first slot offers the remedy instead of Run: Unlock, Unlock & home or Soft reset. See After an alarm.

Machine tools

"The machine can jog" means: connected, homed (or without homing switches), not in alarm, no job running, and no probing or mesh probing under way. See The homing gate, Probing, Manual spindle and coolant and Saved positions.

The machine view

The file banner

The banner across the top of the view names the loaded program, its line count and its estimated time, such as Face 1.nc · 129 lines · est. 2m 36s. With nothing loaded it reads No file loaded — select from Projects. Tap it to go to Projects; Control does not open files itself. See Loading a program.

The bed and the toolpath

The bed is drawn to the active machine's travel, with the machine's name along its front edge. Check that name before cutting: a different profile means different travel and different saved positions. The toolpath is drawn where the current work zero places it. During a job the tool is drawn moving along it.

Turning the view

Drag with one finger to turn the view, two fingers to move it and pinch to zoom. Tap a face of the view cube to look straight at it; the house beside the cube returns to the starting view. See Touch, S Pen and the viewport.

The view toggles

The toggles at the bottom of the view change only what is drawn:

The stock's margins come from Stock Margin XY and Stock Margin Z in Settings → General.

The safety colours

When a program loads, every move is checked against the active machine:

The Safety toggle shows the worst finding: red, amber, or its ordinary colour when clean. The colours inform; they do not block Start. The check that does block is Work Envelope Exceeded; see Soft limits and travel.

Location card

The header names the work system, such as Work · G54. Every control on the card needs the machine connected, Idle, able to jog, and no move under way.

The bed map

The map is the machine's bed in proportion, with the tool as a dot: solid blue when homed, a hollow ring when not, red if the reported position is outside travel.

Drag the dot to move the machine. Touch near the dot, drag, and a green dot follows your finger. Let go and the machine raises Z to the safe height, then moves X and Y to that spot. The target is held inside travel. This needs a homed machine, and it moves without asking.

X, Y and Z

A typed target outside travel is held at the limit, and the Notes card says so. Go-to moves run at the feed of the jog speed selected on the Jog card.

Jog card

• The compass moves X and Y: Y+ up, X+ right, Y− down, X− left, and the unlabelled diagonals move both. STOP in the centre cancels a jog.
• Z+ and Z− move Z.
• The Step column sets the distance of one press: 0.1 to 100 mm in metric, 0.005 to 5 in in inch units.
• Step / Continuous: in Step, each press moves one step. In Continuous, hold to move and let go to stop; a press shorter than a quarter of a second moves nothing.
• Rapid / Normal / Precise chooses the jog speed. The header shows its feed, such as F 5000 mm/min.

The whole card waits until the machine can jog. With Stop Jog at Limits on, a jog that would leave travel is shortened or blocked, and the Notes card says which.

Run Information and Notes

The card at the bottom has two tabs: Run Information (with the number of files loaded) and Notes. Tap the chevron, or the selected tab, to fold or unfold it. It opens by itself when a program loads or a note arrives.

Run Information lists:

For a project the card also lists each file with its tool and status: ✓ done, a pulsing dot for the one running, ✗ failed. Tapping a file loads it.

Notes keeps two records: Run Information, the job's events (Job started, Paused, Job completed, alarms, connection changes), and NOTES, standing conditions and results from the machine tools, such as No homing switches or Jog shortened to X limit. Swipe a note left to dismiss it; standing conditions stay until they no longer apply.

Drawers

Tools open as drawers that drop down from under the position readout. A drawer names itself, keeps its own record of what happened (HOMING NOTES, ZEROING NOTES, GO-TO NOTES and so on) and closes with its × or Cancel when the job allows. A drawer waiting for your decision shades the screen behind it. A machine condition drawer, for an alarm, always sits on top. E-STOP stays reachable above them all.

Starting: the checks

Start checks the setup before anything is sent. The first that fails opens its drawer:

The buttons Home Machine, Go Set Zero and Reposition close the drawer and leave you on Control, where the rail and the Location card do the job.

Related

• Your first job, end to end
• Loading a program
• Projects
• Reading the position display
• E-STOP, feed hold and reset