[Noisebridge-discuss] CNC Shop Class

[Jonathan Foote]

Yes, exactly, simulate at home (or wherever). The sim is awesome: if
you click on a tool path in the 3D display it will highlight the gcode
instruction that produced it.

Couple things: autoconf-compiling kicked my ass (on my impoverished
slim pc-fit) so I RT the F documentation: turns out you can apt-get
install emc-sim (details on the wiki). But a writeup of compiling
steps would also be great.

Got the limit switches working yesterday and Mike put in an endstop on
the X axis so I think we are up to Safety Third, if not Second.

I have some tools coming in this week (fine- pitch Niagara carbide end
mills from Small Parts via Amazon) and I have high hopes of scootching
out a circuit board by the end of the week.

(hey MCT, the NB logo circuit board schematic from the website was
corrupted. Do you have another version? And where's the ATTiny code?)


On Monday, October 12, 2009, Michael Wright <mike at smallip.com> wrote:
> I'd like the simulator on a separate machine at NB, and for lots of
> people to be able to simulate running parts on their own machines.
> There's limited value to having the simulator on the Mill Computer
> because one could just leave the Mill power off and effectively have a
> simulator, or "Home" the Z axis up in the air and watch the mill
> actually run.
>
> At this point the Mill and Mill Control Computer are effectively a
> single resource.  If folks can prep their g-code files on a separate
> machine, that will greatly increase the number of people who can make
> parts on the mill.  This would also hopefully make it more social (I
> can be making g-code while Jon's cutting parts, or vice-versa).
>
> Having good simulator setup instructions would make it much easier for
> anyone running Linux to have their g-code sorted before arriving.
> That's how I'm hoping to do it using VM-Ware on MacOS.
>
> mike
>
> On Oct 12, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Seth David Schoen wrote:
>
>> Jonathan Foote writes:
>>
>>>> OK, it definitely simulated milling something!  How would I get it
>>>> to
>>>> simulate our machine in particular?
>>>
>>> That's great, thanks Seth, I will wikitize your steps.
>>>
>>> There's actually nothing machine-specific that you need at this
>>> point:
>>> your UI will look pretty much exactly what we have now.
>>>
>>> We will likely get to tool configuration  and accurate X,Y,Z hard
>>> limits but for now you are good to go!
>>>
>>> For a sanity check, try simulating a run of the NB logo gcode from
>>> here: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Identity
>>
>> That also ran perfectly in the simulator.  If you want, I can make a
>> typescript of the exact commands I typed to compile the simulator
>> (but I
>> think the emc2 package is actually comparatively very well-behaved and
>> easy to compile compared to plenty of software out there).
>>
>> This raises the question of what people working with this machine
>> expect
>> the right, best, or typical workflow to be.  Do you mainly want
>>
>> * the simulator working on the same machine in the shop that's used to
>>  control the mill?
>>
>> * the simulator working on a separate dedicated machine at Noisebridge
>>  that people can use to simulate their projects before uploading
>> them to
>>  that machine?
>>
>> * the simulator working on lots of individuals' own computers?
>>
>> Is getting this simulation working mainly a one-time thing or
>> something
>> that many prospective users will want to replicate over and over
>> again?
>>
>> --
>> Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Qué empresa fácil no pensar
>> en
>>     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/   | un tigre, reflexioné.
>>     http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/     |            -- Borges, El Zahir
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