PRIME MOTIONFirst launch
The first time you open Prime Motion it does not yet know what machine it will drive. Until it does, it offers only what is safe without that knowledge. Three steps bring the rest of the app to life, in this order:
- Describe your machine in Wizards → Machine Setup.
- Connect the controller.
- Home the machine from the Control screen.
You can design parts before any of this. The Design tab works without a machine at all.
What you see before a machine exists
With no machine profile, Prime Motion opens on Wizards. In the navigation bar only Wizards, Design and Help respond. The others are drawn dim and ignore taps.
They wait for a reason. A machine profile tells the app the machine's travel, its homing corner, its spindle and its accessories. Without it, the app cannot check a move against travel, cannot draw the bed, and cannot know whether the controller needs homing. Rather than guess, it offers nothing that could move a machine.
Describe your machine
Wizards → Machine Setup asks what you own: the manufacturer, then the model and size, then the accessories, then a name. Choose Custom / Generic GRBL at the bottom of the list for a machine that is not listed; the wizard then asks for the travel itself.
The last step, Finish — Activate Machine, saves the profile and makes it the active machine. Finish Setup then takes you to Control. Full detail is in Machine profiles and the setup wizard.
What a profile unlocks
As soon as a profile exists, these tabs respond: Control, Design, Tools, Wizards, Help and Settings.
Projects, Macros and History wait until the machine is ready to work. That means homed since it connected, or, for a machine without homing switches, simply connected. Each of those tabs can start motion or a program, so each waits for a machine that knows where it is. See the homing gate.
Connect, then home
- Plug the controller into the tablet's USB port and power the machine. When Android asks whether Prime Motion may use the USB device, allow it. The connection then opens on its own.
- Check Settings → Connection. Live connection reads CONNECTED when the link is up.
- Open Control. The state tag at the top right of the position bar changes from Offline to the controller's state, such as Idle or Alarm.
- Tap Home in the command rail and confirm in the Home all axes drawer. When the cycle finishes, Projects, Macros and History respond.
A machine that has no homing switches skips step 4. The Notes card on Control says No homing switches — Jog freely; set work zero manually, and the gated tabs respond once the machine is connected.
The full sequence, including what to do when the link will not come up, is in Connecting to your machine.
Where the app opens afterwards
Once a machine profile exists, Prime Motion always opens on Control, whatever tab you were on when you closed it. A design you were working on is not lost: open Design and reopen it from the Designs panel.
What you can do straight away
You can model a part, plan its toolpaths and post the program with no machine connected. The Design tab, and the Design, Manufacturing and Parameters workspaces inside it, move nothing, so they are never gated. Connecting and homing are needed only when it is time to cut.