The warning 'Outside Machine Limits' is warning you that the machine will travel outside its working area, it is correct that it is giving you this warning, otherwise, you could potentially damage your machine.
If you think your Work Zero is set correctly, the most common culprit is the Z travel height being set too high.
Please look at the highlighted red section in this image of Vectric Software: Image
The values: Rapid Z Gap Above Material (Z1 & Z2), Home / Start Position - Z Gap Above Material, are set too high.
You would normally set these all to be the same value. They should also just be big enough to clear any clamps holding your material.
(By default, Vectric set Home / Start Position - Z Gap Above Material to ~20mm, and this is normally too high and will cause the 'Outside Machine Limits' error)
If this does not fix your error, it is then probably because your Work Zero is not set correctly. In this case, please follow these steps:
1. Load the job locally into the G-Code Viewer by right-clicking the file under File Management > Jobs and pressing 'plugins.CNCgcodeViewer.view3D'
2. Go to Control > G-Code Viewer and look at the file preview.
3. The Grid is the working area of your machine.
4. The X, Y, and Z-Axis markers show where the Work Zero is located.
5. The Red Lines are your jobs travel lines, and the Blue Lines are your jobs cutting lines. Check all the Red and Blue lines fall within the grid. If they do not fall within the grid, either your Work Zero is set wrong, or the job is too big for your machine.
If you have not got the G-Code Viewer, please update to our latest firmware: How To Update WorkBee Firmware V1.0.7 > V3.3.0-1.2
4 Comments
An example might be helpful. The set up instructions recommend a spoil board of say 18mm hardboard. This reduces your max height from 88 (from the machine bed) to 70. Also deduct any "gap" height above the workpiece I use 5mm. So the maximum thickness of material in this case would be 65mm. Setting a value above 65 would give you an out of limits error.
David - Reply
Found in the visualizer after post process completed the writing that the Z Axis at the start of the program was set as below:
G53 G0 Z90
This is wrong as the limits for my Z as it is only 88 so the process file is incorrect and needs to be adjusted to Z88, You can edit the post process file and search for Z90 there are 2 instance's where it applies the Z Height you just change them both to the same height that is listed in your machine specific section under Machine working area as mine is a 750x750x88 the Z is going to be 88 as long as this matches your height this should alleviate any issues.
Found out by trial and errors over 5 very stress full days and failures and now works first time every time.
Shaun Richards - Reply
Hi Team, I was wondering if from the alert that you get is possible to understand with which axis the problem is. For instance, I am getting error "Error: G0/G1: target position outside machine limits", I guess that it's due to a Z axis issue but can't be 100% sure.
Any way I can restrict my troubleshooting to a single axis from the logs?
Julien Moro - Reply
Hi Rebert,
Assembled machine and set up . Run my first job with your “hello world” example and worked fine. I created my first job and got “machine out of limits” I had set my Z1 limit set to clear my clamps (40mm high). replaced clamps with screws and set z1 to 5mm and job runs ok. I dont understand this 5 mm clearance, how can a clamp be cleared with this value. I assume I am missing something.
Tom Callanan - Reply