[Noisebridge-discuss] CNC Shop Class

[Michael Wright]

The Mill is operational in a safety 5th sort of way.  This means it  
will in fact cut patterns from g-code, at the moment it will only do  
that with the spindle running at full speed any time it's plugged in,  
though I'm planning to fix that first.

I consider it safety 5th because it doesn't have travel limits like  
the manufacturer intended.  The manufacturer relied on software to  
keep the travel in range, we're not using their software and haven't  
sorted out how to make EMC2 do that (or a hardware solution).  In  
short we need to be watching it all the time, and only run things near  
the middle of it's ranges (so we have time to turn it off).

If it appears to be getting out of hand, please is turn it's power  
switch off (the one on the side of the control box).  Note however  
that after doing this you'll probably need to restart the software  
because it will be out of sync with the controller (it gets out of  
sync).

If it only looks like it might be getting out of hand, the F1 key  
should toggle Emergency Stop in the software (which at present won't  
stop the spindle).

In terms of learning CNC, EMC2 has a really really nice simulator  
(well, actually it's a 3D representations of what it thinks the  
machine it's controlling is doing).  It runs reasonably well on VM- 
Ware (even on my little MSI Netbook).  If anyone wants a copy of the  
VM I use it's about 6.4 GB (alternatively you can just download  
the .ISO and make your own.  It seems to run much better installed on  
the VM hard disk with 2 virtual cores than it did running diskless  
(from the .ISO file).  Currently it has 700 MB available and is using  
360.

Effectively this means anyone can sort out their G-Code file before  
ever touching the mill (or while someone else is running a different  
job on the mill).

I'm defining "getting that g****d mill to work" as getting it to where  
EMC2 accepts G-Code.  I think Jon has done some work on setting up a  
tool-chain and put links on the wiki.  It would be wonderful if  
someone sorted out a tool-chain and possibly set it up to run on  
something other than the Mill controller at NB.


mike

On Oct 8, 2009, at 6:43 PM, Shannon Lee wrote:

> I believe the shop class tomorrow will address this particular area  
> of idiocy (I am hoping so).  Whether it will increase or decrease  
> the general level of CNC Idiocy remains to be seen.
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Al Billings <albill at openbuddha.com>  
> wrote:
> So I know nothing about CNC stuff but have seen all the traffic about
> the mill. Will the shop class tomorrow night rectify my idiocy (at
> least in this limited area)?
>
> Al
>
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>
>
>
> -- 
> Shannon Lee
> (503) 539-3700
>
> "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science."
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20091009/896b39cf/attachment-0003.html>