Connect Your CNC: Web Serial Machine Control
JACR CNC Studio is a Web Serial CNC controller — it talks to your GRBL router directly over USB from the browser. No UGS, no Candle, no drivers beyond your board's own: plug in, click Connect, pick the port, and the studio streams your job with live position, feed control and guided pauses.
What you need
- A GRBL-based machine (Genmitsu, Sainsmart, Shapeoko-class, most hobby routers).
- Chrome or Edge on desktop — Web Serial is a Chromium feature; Safari and Firefox can design and export but not connect.
- A USB cable to the controller board, and a membership — designing is always free; the membership unlocks every export and the carving itself, including the roughing stage with its safe guided bit swap.
First connection
- Click Connect in the studio, choose your board's serial port in the browser prompt, and you're live — the console shows GRBL's hello and current status.
- Home the machine ($H) if you have limit switches, jog to your stock corner, and set work zero. The wizard walks each of these with plain-English steps.
- The studio can read and write your GRBL $ settings from its console — steps/mm, travel limits and homing behavior — so tuning happens in the same place you carve.
Running a job
Start the carve from the Carving Wizard and the studio streams G-code with proper flow control, a live progress read-out and an accurate time estimate. Multi-bit jobs pause at each tool change with instructions, raise the spindle safely out of the way, and re-home before resuming so position is never lost on long carvings.
🛡 If something goes wrong: a disconnect or crash shows the last confirmed line so you can resume from a known-good point, and resuming re-verifies machine position before any metal moves. Keep a hand near the E-stop on first runs all the same — that's just good shop practice.
Why browser control is worth it
One tab holds the whole chain — design, toolpaths, G-code and the machine itself. And only the in-app runner can carve the pro roughing job: bulk-clear with a bigger bit, then a guided tool change back to your detail bit — the sequence that breaks generic senders, handled properly here. No exporting between programs, no version drift, and the same guided flow every time: spindle check, homing, clamp clearance, carve.
Next: Toolpaths & G-Code · Getting Started
