On Saturday 21 June 2014 09:44:36 Jack Coats did opine And Gene did reply: > http://youtu.be/hnDKqr-g3t4 > > Any ideas on how to implement this kind of thing? > > I know it is more than I have the ability for, but it could be a > fantastic edition that allows > LinuxCNC to be even more useful to small businesses. > > ><> ... Jack
I think so too Jack, but at the same time, with our ability to build custom Mwords, and carve up hal files, I would state that the limits of what LCNC can do right now, are far from being fully explored. I can envision a row of machines, each doing a specific operation to work mount on a pallet, with nothing more than a tally signal to indicate state of each machine, busy or finished, that in turn tells the robot to unload that pallet, park it, and get another pallet and reload that particular machine. Each machine would be running at its own best pace so the overall production would be limited by the slowest operation of course, but still, with say 5 or 6 machines in a row, it would outrun a human trying to keep up. That doesn't neutralize the fact that 99% of such setups are going to be one offs though. And they will need someone familiar enough with that setup to reset/reprogram it for the next, different part. It will also need, built into each machine, or into the robot, a means of servicing dull tooling. Code for an individual operation will tend to be made into reusable modules, perhaps even taking stored in memory, globally named values for how deep this hole is going to be, set by the master program. I don't think any of this is beyond what LCNC can do right now. Obviously not thru the pin limited parport, but folks like PCW sell the stuff to blow that limit into the next drainage. I'm your old fart here, but every time I come across an operation that my toys can't do, I find its usually nothing more than a dozen or so more lines in the hal file to make it do it, G33.1 for instance on a lathe with a single quadrant spindle drive. A few lines of hal to synthesize the stop missing from G33.1 when it turns around, a triplet of ice cube relays to rig up dynamic braking, staged in effect by 2 more relays from the instantly known spindle speed, and a loop of gcode running g33.1 with variable arguments each pass thru the loop, and I can put a 1/4" or 6mm tap, in a drill chuck mounted in a boring bar holder, and I can tap that hole an inch deep (or however long the tap is) without stressing the tap. I program it to pull the tap out far enough I have time to blow it clean and drop enough cutting oil on it for the next pass back in, usually going between 1/2 and 3/4 turn farther each time. The only problem with that I found while cutting air, is that if it hits the -z limit set in the .ini file, a g33.1 comes uncoupled at the limit, the carriage stops moving until the spindle has completed the reverse and the phantom Z comes back past that limit, at which point the carriage resumes tracking the rigid tapping motion for the back out move. Found by cutting air so no broken tap (yet). Thats why, at nearly 300 LOC, my hal file for a puny little 7x12 seems to be the longest hal file extant here. But it works. I won't say its unlimited, but we have NOT fully explored what it can do right now. We certainly have no shortage of talented people here who CAN do this stuff. And I thank them for these tools every time I open the shop door. But not loud enough I fear. Thank you all. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ HPCC Systems Open Source Big Data Platform from LexisNexis Risk Solutions Find What Matters Most in Your Big Data with HPCC Systems Open Source. Fast. Scalable. Simple. Ideal for Dirty Data. Leverages Graph Analysis for Fast Processing & Easy Data Exploration http://p.sf.net/sfu/hpccsystems _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
