I have a 3018 pro chinese cnc, the program disc that came with it had the driver and a program to run on my pc called Grbl control, which I believe is Candle 1.1.7.
All this is old hat to you guys, but seeing as I'm 73 and anything more complicated than a ZX Spectrum is a little beyond me.
The problem I have is the program worked perfectly fine after two days of getting my head around it and I actually did cut several shapes out of 3mm thick MDF, but now when I load something in to cut, it does cut but the picture on screen doesn't move and trace out where the cutters been.
Looking forward to a reply from my 1st post, and people, stay safe out there.
just another quick question, I'm trying to get my machine to do multiple passes lowering the cutter 1mm each pass, but although I tick the multiple passes box in svg to gcode program (I'm using a free one off the internet simply called "SVGtoGCODE.Ink") grbl ignores that piece of code and just does one pass. I says "error: Expected command letter" and "Unsupported command"
Perhaps someone knows how to tell grbl how to do this, thanks
tictoc:
The problem I have is the program worked perfectly fine after two days of getting my head around it and I actually did cut several shapes out of 3mm thick MDF, but now when I load something in to cut, it does cut but the picture on screen doesn't move and trace out where the cutters been.
Is that picture on your PC screen or is it on the LCD attached to the printer?
...R
TOPIC SPLIT !
There are multiple FREE programs out there.
Some depends on your operating system ?
My preference is for UGS which does show where the cutter is in relation to the job.
GRBL is not a complete G-CODE set of commands so some are ignored or cause errors if you use them.
For best results I save my g-code as MACH 2 or MACH 3 compatible.
As for multiple passes there are not many free programs that have the option and many that do are or can be expensive.
Certainly dont try heavy cuts on these machines as most come with a cheap spindle that is simply not up to the task.
It may also be worth your time reading this thread despite the fact that we wander off on occasion 
Could you take a few moments to Learn How To Use The Forum.
Other general help and troubleshooting advice can be found here.
It will help you get the best out of the forum in the future.
thanks Robin2, the picture is on my pc screen, i'm using Candle 1.1.7 /grbl controller
and thanks to Global moderator, I found out quite early on to take it easy on depth of cut, so i'll just resort to changing the depth on the code after every pass,
Moderator AKA Bob.
Not to be confused with other moderators called Bob. 8)
tictoc:
thanks Robin2, the picture is on my pc screen, i'm using grbl 1.1.7
GRBL is the program running on your Arduino. The program running on the PC is completely different and it's job is to send the gcode commands to the GRBL program.
What program are you running on your PC?
...R
Firstly I'd like to say sorry to Ballswrewbob, I looked at the wrong name on your post.
Robin2, thanks for clearing that up, I've only just got this cnc so not quite clear on what's what yet, but yes it is grbl and the program on my computer is Candle 1.1.7 version. I tried downloading the 1.2.7b but I could get it to work so went back to original version.
If the CNC machine is working properly the problem (not displaying live progress) seems to be a problem with Candle and I'm not familiar with that.
...R
After much head scratching, I looked into folder that was on the disc which was packed in with the cnc, and messed about uninstalling/reinstalling grbl controller and in that folder was also a restore firmware folder.
Now I always keep away from touching anything like that because I know nothing about it but, I'm desperate, so I opened it and followed the instructions that came with it.(Select chip Uno ATmega328 from list)
At the end it said "upload failed" so I retried back on the original one and it said "uploading" and it seemed to be stuck uploading for about an hour, so in the end I pulled the plug and opened Grbl controller/Candle visualizer on the PC, loaded and tried to run a couple of svg files and for some reason unbeknown to me it started to follow the tool path as it should.
I haven't a clue how it got fix or what I did to break it in the beginning, so I'm afraid this won't help anyone with the same problem.
Thanks for you help anyway, I did appreciate it.