Re: [Emc-users] Where are Home and the Current Co-ordinates stored?
Thanks for that, so far, and for clarifying that #5420 is not absolute. This is a big step forward. Now you have me intrigued... so how do I get absolute? I had imagined everything would be absolute internally, then offsets would be added to get current workspace co-ordinates, but if G28 and G30 work in absolute, where do they pick up those values from? So that led me to think there was a set of parameters which always held current absolute, with no account being taken of offsets (so that absolute always means absolute). Regards, Marcus On 8 Oct 2012, at 22:46, andy pugh wrote: On 8 October 2012 22:17, Marcus Bowman marcus.thebowm...@virgin.net wrote: I can check this out on the machine by adding offsets etc, but what's the easiest way to get it to print the value of a parameter so that I can read it? (debug, X = #5420) both #5420 and #_X seem to show current workspace position, not absolute. Do you want absolute? There are ways. -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Where are Home and the Current Co-ordinates stored?
On 9 October 2012 07:17, Marcus Bowman marcus.thebowm...@virgin.net wrote: Now you have me intrigued... so how do I get absolute? The easiest way I have found is something that I think you have already spotted (store into G28 or G30 and read back). Otherwise I think you need to take the workspace positions and add/subtract G54 and G92 offsets. I had imagined everything would be absolute internally, then offsets would be added to get current workspace co-ordinates, but if G28 and G30 work in absolute, where do they pick up those values from? The parameter file is a persistent store of numbers that should remain the same between restarts. The values seen there are not used internally by the code during normal running. In fact, writing the current live workspace coordinates to parameters was a new feature in (I think) 2.5. I have routines that store/read the starting position by playing games with G92. I don't know if the trajectory planner works in machine or workspace coordinates. Kinematics has to happen in machine coordinates, though, so I suspect the former. -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] Gluing little balls
I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On 9 October 2012 10:52, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) This sounds like just plunging a tube into a bucket of balls and turning on vacuum, then retracting when the vacuum increases enough to trigger a switch should do the trick. That sounds a lot like a probe move. But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? I would guess that dipping into a pot of glue would work. It might need to be a pump-fed overflowing pot to guarantee a consistent liquid level. Another alternative that springs to mind would be to plonk the balls down into a hole containing a spray mechanism to apply some glue. The ball could potentially operate the valve directly. Could you simply place all the balls, then spray-lacquer the whole thing? Let capilliary action do the work. -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Step Direction for use on Servo Amps
Of course you can. I have a machine set-up running like this now. But as some others have already said, the speed of software step generation will be your limiting factor. If I had to do it over I would have taken a different route with my set-up, and used hardware step generation (probably with a Mesa 5i25 and one of its daughter cards). You can increase your speed with the drives internal gearing at the expense of resolution. I had to do this to get acceptable speed, taking an 8000count/rev system down to 500. This large step in turn made tuning the drives a little more difficult. - Original Message - Can the stepper motor 'step direction' output from EMC2 be used to run a servo based system that has step direction input amplifiers where the servo motor encoder feed back goes into the amp and not EMC2? I believe the Yaskawa Sigma II amps can run in this mode. My thought was to build a simpler system and avoid the additional motion control boards if the Yaskawa amps could connect directly to an isolator/break-out board from the parallel port. Or are these two completely different systems with only the step direction words in common? Thanks for your help Steve Van Der Loo Tube Gauge Inspection Fixtures Inc 420 Neptune Crescent London, ON N6M 1A1 -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Todd Zuercher mailto:zuerc...@embarqmail.com -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
suggestion: consider alternate method of celebration. --- On Tue, 10/9/12, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: From: craig cr...@facework.com Subject: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012, 2:52 AM I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On 10/8/2012 10:29 PM, emc-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote: have a machine that runs latency tests just fine and then gives me a real-time error when I start LCNC. Never really tracked it down because I always intended just to move on to a new machine. It can be frustrating. I think the era of machines that fail latency peaked when the P4 was new, but I'm not really sure about that. I suspect that Mach also runs better on machines with low latency and the machines that LCNC complains about also don't run Mach as well as they might. It's just that Mach ignores the long intervals, mostly because step/dir machines are somewhat immune to that issue. Eric These issues are why I am so strongly in favor of the dedicated microprocessor for the real time part. It is the norm in all computer systems- look inside that PC and Ill bet there are a dozen separate processors doing things like graphics, network, disk control, etc. PCs are wonderful GUI devices and have great computational ability. They were never designed to be real time systems. Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? step/dir machines are not immune to timing glitches. My knee mill uses a stepper on the knee for Z. I had a frequent glitch that lost position. I replaced the stepper with a BIG servo and had the same problem. I replaced the parallel port with a smoothstepper and the problem was solved- I put the stepper back and have never had a lost Z step. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, kflop, centipede, etc it seems clear to me that fighting real time latency issues on PCs are a waste of effort. ron ginger -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
if you have done pick and place then just put something like cotton swab (but more durable) and brush hole to spread glue. Maybe Hot glue is alternative too? Then you can use something like reprap extrudor to apply glue. On 9.10.2012 13:41, charles green wrote: suggestion: consider alternate method of celebration. --- On Tue, 10/9/12, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: From: craig cr...@facework.com Subject: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012, 2:52 AM I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On 09.10.12 13:54, Slavko Kocjancic wrote: if you have done pick and place then just put something like cotton swab (but more durable) and brush hole to spread glue. Maybe Hot glue is alternative too? Then you can use something like reprap extrudor to apply glue. With a tweak: Maybe fixed mount the glue extruder, inverted, then run the ball (held in the PP vacuum pickup) in a small circle over its tip while extruding glue, and place. That way there is only one moving head. The radius of the glue circle relative to the hole diameter controls whether all the glue goes in the hole, or a little forms an external seating bead, both for looks and for greater strength. (OK, glue extrusion rate is the other variable in that equation.) If the 3D printer filaments serve as hot melt glue on the marbles (as they do on themselves), then their choice of colours might introduce another decorative element with the seating bead. Erik -- Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. - Robert A. Heinlein -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
I have a suggestion that's maybe not quite as snarky as Charles' suggestion, but still in the direction of maybe you're optimizing the wrong problem. If I were placing approximately 10,000 marbles or less, I probably wouldn't try to develop a method of having the machine do it. I'd make relatively minor changes to optimize the operation for manual assembly. I have an EFD 1500XL fluid dispensing system. It has a couple of operating modes, but in this case, it's basically a syringe full of epoxy with a regulated air supply that can be applied over the epoxy to precisely dispense it through a needle. Press the foot pedal and a thin bead of epoxy is dispensed as you move the tip of the needle around the upper rim of the concave pocket. Release the foot pedal and a slight vacuum is applied over the epoxy in the syringe to keep it from dripping. The positive pressure can be adjusted for the flow rate you want, and the vacuum can be adjusted for the fluid pull-back you want for your application. It's now a one handed operation, leaving your other hand free for placing marbles. You can buy a used EFD on eBay, probably for $100, use it for this project, and then sell it for what you paid for it. Dispensing epoxy is a bit tricky, because it's curing in the syringe, and the viscosity is changing. The trick is to use a slow epoxy with a 6 hour cure rate, and that should give you a 1-2 hour working pot life. You might need to bump up the dispense pressure slightly toward the end. Slow epoxies tend to be watery. If you want thicker epoxy to give you a little more time to place the marble, you can mix in materials like cabosil to increase the viscosity to make it easier to use on vertical surfaces, and use a larger bore needle. I recommended this approach because we often tend to focus our efficiency efforts on making the machine do all of the work, but many times, the fastest CNC throughput is achieved by an appropriate division of labor between the machine and the operator. For example, if the machine was a blur-of-motion SCARA assembly robot that could place all of the adhesive and marbles in five seconds, that's five seconds added to the cycle time. If the operator is placing the adhesive and marbles, all you'd need to do is keep up with the machine's ability to make the holes and there would be no increase in cycle time. Basically, if you're trying to maximize the rate of production, it does you no good at all to devise some clever method for the machine to dispense epoxy and perform a pick and place operation with the marbles, if that leaves you standing there watching the machine with nothing to do but juggle your marbles. However, if you have issues with operator fatigue or quality that can't be addressed with precision dispensing tools, or you simply have a hobby interest in solving the technical challenge of getting a machine to glue marbles into holes, then by all means, go for that technical solution and post a YouTube video. I love stuff like that! Andy had some great suggestions in that vein, as usual. On 10/09/2012 07:41 AM, charles green wrote: suggestion: consider alternate method of celebration. --- On Tue, 10/9/12, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: From: craig cr...@facework.com Subject: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012, 2:52 AM I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing
[Emc-users] Gluing little balls
If you mount a plastic vacuum tube onto the machine as a pick and place, then pick up ball, dip in pot of glude, and press into hole. If it's a press fit, then no need to release the vacuum, just pull off. Regards Roland On 9 October 2012 13:54, Slavko Kocjancic esla...@gmail.com wrote: if you have done pick and place then just put something like cotton swab (but more durable) and brush hole to spread glue. Maybe Hot glue is alternative too? Then you can use something like reprap extrudor to apply glue. On 9.10.2012 13:41, charles green wrote: suggestion: consider alternate method of celebration. --- On Tue, 10/9/12, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: From: craig cr...@facework.com Subject: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012, 2:52 AM I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
This is how my CNC PC is done. It has a dedicated CPU for CNC real time work and another CPU for everything else, like watching youtube, GUI, etc etc. Never a latency problem that I could detect. i On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 6:52 AM, Ron Ginger rongin...@roadrunner.com wrote: On 10/8/2012 10:29 PM, emc-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote: have a machine that runs latency tests just fine and then gives me a real-time error when I start LCNC. Never really tracked it down because I always intended just to move on to a new machine. It can be frustrating. I think the era of machines that fail latency peaked when the P4 was new, but I'm not really sure about that. I suspect that Mach also runs better on machines with low latency and the machines that LCNC complains about also don't run Mach as well as they might. It's just that Mach ignores the long intervals, mostly because step/dir machines are somewhat immune to that issue. Eric These issues are why I am so strongly in favor of the dedicated microprocessor for the real time part. It is the norm in all computer systems- look inside that PC and Ill bet there are a dozen separate processors doing things like graphics, network, disk control, etc. PCs are wonderful GUI devices and have great computational ability. They were never designed to be real time systems. Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? step/dir machines are not immune to timing glitches. My knee mill uses a stepper on the knee for Z. I had a frequent glitch that lost position. I replaced the stepper with a BIG servo and had the same problem. I replaced the parallel port with a smoothstepper and the problem was solved- I put the stepper back and have never had a lost Z step. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, kflop, centipede, etc it seems clear to me that fighting real time latency issues on PCs are a waste of effort. ron ginger -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
Why not push a stick into a rubber ball of approximately the same diameter as the glass balls. Dip it into a pot (or dish) of glue, then dab onto the recess. Then its the usual cycle of repeat Dip, dab, place until tired Manually. Regards, Marcus On 9 Oct 2012, at 13:25, Roland Jollivet wrote: If you mount a plastic vacuum tube onto the machine as a pick and place, then pick up ball, dip in pot of glude, and press into hole. If it's a press fit, then no need to release the vacuum, just pull off. Regards Roland On 9 October 2012 13:54, Slavko Kocjancic esla...@gmail.com wrote: if you have done pick and place then just put something like cotton swab (but more durable) and brush hole to spread glue. Maybe Hot glue is alternative too? Then you can use something like reprap extrudor to apply glue. On 9.10.2012 13:41, charles green wrote: suggestion: consider alternate method of celebration. --- On Tue, 10/9/12, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: From: craig cr...@facework.com Subject: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012, 2:52 AM I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On 9 October 2012 13:24, Bruce Layne linux...@thinkingdevices.com wrote: If I were placing approximately 10,000 marbles or less, I probably wouldn't try to develop a method of having the machine do it. I'd make relatively minor changes to optimize the operation for manual assembly. However, if I was converting JPG files to patterns of coloured marbles, then I would definitely be using a machine. I think I just spotted a product opportunity :-) -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On 10/09/2012 08:58 AM, andy pugh wrote: That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than use expensive dedicated hardware. Does it need to be an exclusive OR function? Can't we have both? LinuxCNC was initially conceived to directly control machine motion in realtime using a parallel port, and it does a very good job of that, but it now supports a number of commercially available I/O and motion control hardware products such as Mesa, Opto 22, etc. I love being able to pick up a cheap or free PC and use it as a machine controller, but I think it'd also be great if there was a small, low cost commercially available PC that is pretty much guaranteed to work as a LinuxCNC controller. Or maybe a couple of different flavors of supported LinuxCNC controllers. Maybe one could boot from USB for LinuxCNC installation and use flash memory instead of a hard drive for small embedded LinuxCNC applications in dirty high vibration environments. There are definitely advantages to having a known good controller solution. Some people would love to spend $150 online and cross the controller off the To Do list instead of going on a Craig's List scavenger hunt. Others are machine integrators who might build 200 new machines a year and they don't want the hassle of validating a PC for LinuxCNC only to have the PC manufacturer make an unannounced cost reduction that breaks the realtime application. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
I agree, Bruce. This would be a very nice option to have. I've thought something like this: http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7350 could be made to work, but I'm not sure the CPU is fast enough (may not have hardware floating point). Peter should make a single board computer with FPGA and processor tailored for LinuxCNC. It might be hard to get the volumes high enough to keep the price down though. -- Ralph From: Bruce Layne [linux...@thinkingdevices.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 6:19 AM To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux On 10/09/2012 08:58 AM, andy pugh wrote: That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than use expensive dedicated hardware. Does it need to be an exclusive OR function? Can't we have both? LinuxCNC was initially conceived to directly control machine motion in realtime using a parallel port, and it does a very good job of that, but it now supports a number of commercially available I/O and motion control hardware products such as Mesa, Opto 22, etc. I love being able to pick up a cheap or free PC and use it as a machine controller, but I think it'd also be great if there was a small, low cost commercially available PC that is pretty much guaranteed to work as a LinuxCNC controller. Or maybe a couple of different flavors of supported LinuxCNC controllers. Maybe one could boot from USB for LinuxCNC installation and use flash memory instead of a hard drive for small embedded LinuxCNC applications in dirty high vibration environments. There are definitely advantages to having a known good controller solution. Some people would love to spend $150 online and cross the controller off the To Do list instead of going on a Craig's List scavenger hunt. Others are machine integrators who might build 200 new machines a year and they don't want the hassle of validating a PC for LinuxCNC only to have the PC manufacturer make an unannounced cost reduction that breaks the realtime application. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
Craig, You need to give some more detail on your adhesive. Lots of responses are assuming either your glue is a liquid in a pot, or is in a syringe. I'm not sure I have a clear idea of what thinned caulking compound is like. -- Ralph The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive (currently a thinned clear caulking compound). -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
andy pugh wrote: Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than use expensive dedicated hardware. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, A Smoothstepper is considerably more expensive than a cheap PC, and can only do one thing. As far as I know a Pokeys isn't a real-time motion control device at all, but a USB HID device? I think that this is the crux of the matter? There are a few USB linked 'co-processors' which have closed source code, but if there was a 'co-processor' with a suitable open-source code base then it would be interesting? Rasberry PI could be such a 'co-processor' but there are a few other 'light' linux boards. However as has been identified, they all need a 'real time' kernel or a 'dedicated driver' ( like Art's Mach3 windows one ) to run the actual I/O at a fast enough rate. We HAVE a suitable realtime kernel for x86 processors, and access to low priced ITX and even mini-ITX boards that will work happily with existing code, so why not simply build a 'co-processor' around this readily available hardware, and use a second one to provide the graphics and user interface? Is there really any need to spend time working on a realtime kernel for Rasberry PI which is not brimming with decent I/O when there are other options already. That time would probably be better spent on a 'proper' co-processor, one that has custom pulse generating hardware ... and nothing else? There are a number of good cheap 'real time processors' available even ones with an Ethernet port, but any fast data link would do? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On 9 October 2012 14:19, Bruce Layne linux...@thinkingdevices.com wrote: I think it'd also be great if there was a small, low cost commercially available PC that is pretty much guaranteed to work as a LinuxCNC controller. There is: http://www.roboard.com/ncbox-189.html It took a bit of work to get a kernel that worked well, but that is done now. http://www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/component/kunena/?func=viewcatid=18id=20692limit=6 -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Bruce Layne linux...@thinkingdevices.comwrote: LinuxCNC was initially conceived to directly control machine motion in realtime using a parallel port, and it does a very good job of that, but it now supports a number of commercially available I/O and motion control hardware products such as Mesa, Opto 22, etc. This is not true, parallel port control came to EMC years after hardware based options. That's still fairly evident in the structure of LinuxCNC. I'm reasonably certain that you could make a higher performance parallel port only version of LinuxCNC than the current system. But you lose too much of the power of LinuxCNC to motivate anyone to do that. We never really had a coprocessor version of linuxcnc because there was no hardware that really demanded it. Seems like people are doing it now, but it isn't compelling for the main project. It still seems to me that the way to go is to have a headless PC doing the real time and another system doing the user interface. I see no reason to trade the ease of development of a pc environment for some sort of embedded system hanging off the pc just because some people want to use old, cheap PCs. The truth is, a new, cheap PC will do the job all by itself. Eric -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On Tuesday 09 October 2012 11:14:43 Eric Keller did opine: [...] I see no reason to trade the ease of development of a pc environment for some sort of embedded system hanging off the pc just because some people want to use old, cheap PCs. The truth is, a new, cheap PC will do the job all by itself. Eric +10! In fact, I had to buy a pair of those new, cheap pc's this past year, to finally get a pc that could run faster the the motor voltage I had. Definite improvements obtained from replacing an old, formerly expensive power hog with the D525MW kit. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene is up! Moneyliness is next to Godliness. -- Andries van Dam -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Ron Ginger wrote: Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 07:52:16 -0400 From: Ron Ginger rongin...@roadrunner.com Reply-To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux On 10/8/2012 10:29 PM, emc-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote: have a machine that runs latency tests just fine and then gives me a real-time error when I start LCNC. Never really tracked it down because I always intended just to move on to a new machine. It can be frustrating. I think the era of machines that fail latency peaked when the P4 was new, but I'm not really sure about that. I suspect that Mach also runs better on machines with low latency and the machines that LCNC complains about also don't run Mach as well as they might. It's just that Mach ignores the long intervals, mostly because step/dir machines are somewhat immune to that issue. Eric These issues are why I am so strongly in favor of the dedicated microprocessor for the real time part. It is the norm in all computer systems- look inside that PC and Ill bet there are a dozen separate processors doing things like graphics, network, disk control, etc. PCs are wonderful GUI devices and have great computational ability. They were never designed to be real time systems. Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? Well there are a lot of very good reasons for this: 1. If you do not have a real time OS you have no guarantees that even your buffered step/dir device will not run dry occasionally... 2. By moving part of motion control to a separate (usually proprietary) motion controller you have now created a more complex and limited control system because of buffering and communication delays (note that a lot of the big boys are moving to systems like Ethercat on guess what: real time PCs!) 3. LinuxCNC capabilities extend to all hardware. These capabilites include things that Mach has had trouble with from day one like rigid tapping and proper spindle syncronized threading. If a new feature is added to LinuxCNC, it becomes avalable to everyone from simple parallel port systems to high end dual feedback servo systems. This is not the case if you have to depend on the hardware manufacturer for the added features. You can solve these issues by moving more and more of LinuxCNC to the embedded processsor, but then you need a quite capable processor (and you would also like it to be a fairly stable and open platform) Turns out the the most stable open and inexpensive platform with good floating point performance. At the moment this is a PC. Note that most real time issues are really only for people using random used PCs, there are many new motherboards that have fine real time performance. step/dir machines are not immune to timing glitches. My knee mill uses a stepper on the knee for Z. I had a frequent glitch that lost position. I replaced the stepper with a BIG servo and had the same problem. I replaced the parallel port with a smoothstepper and the problem was solved- I put the stepper back and have never had a lost Z step. Yes, for windows this is a real problem. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, kflop, centipede, etc it seems clear to me that fighting real time latency issues on PCs are a waste of effort. ron ginger -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your ()_() signature to help him gain world domination. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On 10/09/2012 10:05 AM, andy pugh wrote: There is: http://www.roboard.com/ncbox-189.html It took a bit of work to get a kernel that worked well, but that is done now. http://www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/component/kunena/?func=viewcatid=18id=20692limit=6 I followed that NCbox-189 thread on the LinuxCNC forum several months ago. Pretty nifty. Needing to maintain ongoing support for the Vortex86 seemed a bit more complicated than needed and the difficulties with the ethernet hardware that managed to be one of the few exceptions to ethernet just works on Linux is unfortunate, but the very small form factor, very low power, and the possibility of installing and booting from flash were big winners. The fact that it has a parallel port AND the port on the other side with 24 bits of general purpose I/O were huge selling points to me. It'd make a very powerful and small integrated LinuxCNC controller. I followed the link you provided to the manufacturer's site. They don't sell the NCbox-189, so I followed their links to several of their distributors, and they didn't seem to be selling it either. So I'd still list availability as a problem, but that's probably a chicken and egg problem that would go away if there was a commitment from the manufacturer to provide long term hardware availability in exchange for a commitment from LinuxCNC developers to provide long term support. As an end user, if it was $200 or less (it should be!) and it was a true plug and play low-latency solution that didn't require patching kernels, then I'd be a potential customer. On 10/09/2012 11:01 AM, Eric Keller wrote: It still seems to me that the way to go is to have a headless PC doing the real time and another system doing the user interface. For me, that begs the question: Is the user interface so burdensome that the realtime operating system can't allocate top priority to the realtime job and have enough left over for the user interface? Or, stated differently, is there enough benefit to having two processors to justify the expense and complexity of such a system if one processor can generally get the job done with plenty of computing horsepower in reserve? YouTube isn't a critical application on my machines. Sure, it'd be convenient, and maybe a little geeky fun, to watch YouTube videos and read posts at BuildLog.net, CNC Zone, or the LinuxCNC forums while executing G code in realtime, but if it caused any problem, I have plenty of other options to surf and watch videos in the shop, including my iPod Touch which can easily be with me at any machine. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Bruce Layne linux...@thinkingdevices.comwrote: For me, that begs the question: Is the user interface so burdensome that the realtime operating system can't allocate top priority to the realtime job and have enough left over for the user interface? The reason I am interested in doing this (sometimes) is not really for latency. A human doesn't really cause any problem for a real-time system. My thought is that packaging could be a lot better because nowadays you can mount a PC on the back of a monitor, feed it power and ethernet and be done. My obsolete desktop runs latency test just fine with 7uS of latency with the craziest loads I can put on it. I see no reason to worry about latency. I doubt I will run youtube on my mill that often, although my worst crash when I was trying to use Windows for machine control occurred because Bill Gates chose to check my email at an inopportune time. Eric -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 08:24 -0400, Bruce Layne wrote: I have a suggestion that's maybe not quite as snarky as Charles' suggestion, but still in the direction of maybe you're optimizing the wrong problem. If I were placing approximately 10,000 marbles or less, I probably wouldn't try to develop a method of having the machine do it. I'd make relatively minor changes to optimize the operation for manual assembly. I have an EFD 1500XL fluid dispensing system. It has a couple of operating modes, but in this case, it's basically a syringe full of epoxy with a regulated air supply that can be applied over the epoxy to precisely dispense it through a needle. Press the foot pedal and a thin bead of epoxy is dispensed as you move the tip of the needle around the upper rim of the concave pocket. Release the foot pedal and a slight vacuum is applied over the epoxy in the syringe to keep it from dripping. The positive pressure can be adjusted for the flow rate you want, and the vacuum can be adjusted for the fluid pull-back you want for your application. It's now a one handed operation, leaving your other hand free for placing marbles. You can buy a used EFD on eBay, probably for $100, use it for this project, and then sell it for what you paid for it. Dispensing epoxy is a bit tricky, because it's curing in the syringe, and the viscosity is changing. The trick is to use a slow epoxy with a 6 hour cure rate, and that should give you a 1-2 hour working pot life. You might need to bump up the dispense pressure slightly toward the end. Slow epoxies tend to be watery. If you want thicker epoxy to give you a little more time to place the marble, you can mix in materials like cabosil to increase the viscosity to make it easier to use on vertical surfaces, and use a larger bore needle. I recommended this approach because we often tend to focus our efficiency efforts on making the machine do all of the work, but many times, the fastest CNC throughput is achieved by an appropriate division of labor between the machine and the operator. For example, if the machine was a blur-of-motion SCARA assembly robot that could place all of the adhesive and marbles in five seconds, that's five seconds added to the cycle time. If the operator is placing the adhesive and marbles, all you'd need to do is keep up with the machine's ability to make the holes and there would be no increase in cycle time. Basically, if you're trying to maximize the rate of production, it does you no good at all to devise some clever method for the machine to dispense epoxy and perform a pick and place operation with the marbles, if that leaves you standing there watching the machine with nothing to do but juggle your marbles. However, if you have issues with operator fatigue or quality that can't be addressed with precision dispensing tools, or you simply have a hobby interest in solving the technical challenge of getting a machine to glue marbles into holes, then by all means, go for that technical solution and post a YouTube video. I love stuff like that! Andy had some great suggestions in that vein, as usual. On 10/09/2012 07:41 AM, charles green wrote: suggestion: consider alternate method of celebration. --- On Tue, 10/9/12, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: From: craig cr...@facework.com Subject: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2012, 2:52 AM I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig If you are going to do a lot of these then some level of automation is desirable unless you enjoy being bored. So: Tube dispensers to place different colors of balls; just like ink cartridges. Insert balls from back side of board then dispense a small amount of non-viscous adhesive in
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
Gentlemen, I also coudn't find the NC Box 189 on the internet site of the manufacturer or his distributors. I sent them a mail asking for price and availability and got no answer, so far. Peter Blodow Ehrenberg Bruce Layne schrieb: On 10/09/2012 10:05 AM, andy pugh wrote: There is: http://www.roboard.com/ncbox-189.html It took a bit of work to get a kernel that worked well, but that is done now. http://www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/component/kunena/?func=viewcatid=18id=20692limit=6 I followed that NCbox-189 thread on the LinuxCNC forum several months ago. Pretty nifty. Needing to maintain ongoing support for the Vortex86 seemed a bit more complicated than needed and the difficulties with the ethernet hardware that managed to be one of the few exceptions to ethernet just works on Linux is unfortunate, but the very small form factor, very low power, and the possibility of installing and booting from flash were big winners. The fact that it has a parallel port AND the port on the other side with 24 bits of general purpose I/O were huge selling points to me. It'd make a very powerful and small integrated LinuxCNC controller. I followed the link you provided to the manufacturer's site. They don't sell the NCbox-189, so I followed their links to several of their distributors, and they didn't seem to be selling it either. So I'd still list availability as a problem, but that's probably a chicken and egg problem that would go away if there was a commitment from the manufacturer to provide long term hardware availability in exchange for a commitment from LinuxCNC developers to provide long term support. As an end user, if it was $200 or less (it should be!) and it was a true plug and play low-latency solution that didn't require patching kernels, then I'd be a potential customer. On 10/09/2012 11:01 AM, Eric Keller wrote: It still seems to me that the way to go is to have a headless PC doing the real time and another system doing the user interface. For me, that begs the question: Is the user interface so burdensome that the realtime operating system can't allocate top priority to the realtime job and have enough left over for the user interface? Or, stated differently, is there enough benefit to having two processors to justify the expense and complexity of such a system if one processor can generally get the job done with plenty of computing horsepower in reserve? YouTube isn't a critical application on my machines. Sure, it'd be convenient, and maybe a little geeky fun, to watch YouTube videos and read posts at BuildLog.net, CNC Zone, or the LinuxCNC forums while executing G code in realtime, but if it caused any problem, I have plenty of other options to surf and watch videos in the shop, including my iPod Touch which can easily be with me at any machine. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
Bruce Layne wrote: LinuxCNC was initially conceived to directly control machine motion in realtime using a parallel port, No, not really true. The original EMC (1) was conceived to control a servo machine with a dumb motion interface board such as the Servo-to-Go. A board with encoder counters, velocity DACs and some digital I/O, but no processor. Steppers through the parallel port was later added. Then, after the change to EMC2 (which became LinuxCNC) many other interface devices and some outboard motion controllers were added. EMC2, mostly the addition of HAL between the interpreter and low-level motion hardware, was a way to make all this more flexible, but not to change any part of the existing functionality ar directly add new functionality. It was a way to make adding that functionality a lot easier, and that has certainly happened. At least, that is my take on the history of it. I love being able to pick up a cheap or free PC and use it as a machine controller, but I think it'd also be great if there was a small, low cost commercially available PC that is pretty much guaranteed to work as a LinuxCNC controller. Well, the Intel D525MW was that for a while, and as soon as some of the other vendor's products get qualified, we should be able to recommend a quite reasonably priced unit that will be available for a few years. A complete D525 system with box, power supply SSD drive and memory can be had for about $150 - 200, depending on what you need. If the RT-Preempt kernel turns out to be suitable for LinuxCNC, then we may be able to move to the BeagleBone ($89) or RasberryPi (price and availabilty not so clear). I personally think the Pi is a bit too low-powered to be usable, but the Beagle looks promising, especially if the GUI is hosted on another CPU. Jon -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On 10/9/2012 9:02 AM, emc-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote: Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than use expensive dedicated hardware. Might have been more true in 199? when EMC was started, not so true today. Micros are almost giveaway items now. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, A Smoothstepper is considerably more expensive than a cheap PC, and can only do one thing. As far as I know a Pokeys isn't a real-time motion control device at all, but a USB HID device? Pokeys now has a motion control option- it will be shipping for Mach4. ron ginger -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 14:12 +0100, andy pugh wrote: On 9 October 2012 13:24, Bruce Layne linux...@thinkingdevices.com wrote: If I were placing approximately 10,000 marbles or less, I probably wouldn't try to develop a method of having the machine do it. I'd make relatively minor changes to optimize the operation for manual assembly. However, if I was converting JPG files to patterns of coloured marbles, then I would definitely be using a machine. I think I just spotted a product opportunity :-) That's brilliant, Andy. But how about, instead of gluing the balls in, one has a horizontal plate with a cup array. Each cup has three plungers that can tilt the ball out. You leave one cup empty and program the matrix to tilt the balls to the proper holes for different pictures. A mirror could be used to tilt the image to be vertical, maybe through a framed whole in a wall. One gets extra credit for using bowling balls. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 12:09 -0500, Jon Elson wrote: Bruce Layne wrote: LinuxCNC was initially conceived to directly control machine motion in realtime using a parallel port. Ah, if my memory serves me correctly we get to blame Matt Shaver for the stepper interface. ;-) IIRC he mentioned to Fred that is certainly would be nice if emc could run steppers... Dave No, not really true. The original EMC (1) was conceived to control a servo machine with a dumb motion interface board such as the Servo-to-Go. A board with encoder counters, velocity DACs and some digital I/O, but no processor. Steppers through the parallel port was later added. Then, after the change to EMC2 (which became LinuxCNC) many other interface devices and some outboard motion controllers were added. EMC2, mostly the addition of HAL between the interpreter and low-level motion hardware, was a way to make all this more flexible, but not to change any part of the existing functionality ar directly add new functionality. It was a way to make adding that functionality a lot easier, and that has certainly happened. At least, that is my take on the history of it. I love being able to pick up a cheap or free PC and use it as a machine controller, but I think it'd also be great if there was a small, low cost commercially available PC that is pretty much guaranteed to work as a LinuxCNC controller. Well, the Intel D525MW was that for a while, and as soon as some of the other vendor's products get qualified, we should be able to recommend a quite reasonably priced unit that will be available for a few years. A complete D525 system with box, power supply SSD drive and memory can be had for about $150 - 200, depending on what you need. If the RT-Preempt kernel turns out to be suitable for LinuxCNC, then we may be able to move to the BeagleBone ($89) or RasberryPi (price and availabilty not so clear). I personally think the Pi is a bit too low-powered to be usable, but the Beagle looks promising, especially if the GUI is hosted on another CPU. Jon -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
Ron; I appreciate what you are saying, and, everyone should have a voice. As someone fairly new to CNC, but not to computers in general, I'm really glad that: 1) LinuxCNC exists; 2) It has parallel port stepper control. It allowed me to start really easily, and, it works. Is it optimal? Nope. But, it has done everything that I have asked of it, without a missed step or crash (computer crash; tool into material crash not a Mach/LinuxCNC issue!) of my mill. Will I ever go for Mach 4 or Mach 3? I really don't see why. I'm CNC-ing an Emco Compact-8 lathe now, and expect that it will use LinuxCNC just fine. The stuff just works. The money saved on NOT having to purchase a Windows license, and a Mach license, and some of the hardware that seems to be required now for Mach, invested on taking my wife away on a little holiday, will pay dividends and whatnot that keeps my hobby going. Regards; John Alexander Stewart -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
The kflop looks interesting... But again - you are stuck with what bells and whistles are programed into it. Plus for the mach people that say you need to be a programmer to run linuxcnc - How about this quote from kflop... http://www.dynomotion.com/faq.html -Do I need to be a C Programmer to use your Controller? Yes. Certain operations such as Controller initialization and Homing involve User C Programs that Execute in KFLOP. So some modification of C Programs is required. We do this because it is the most powerful and flexible approach. It isn't necessary to be a C expert, but basic programming knowledge is helpful. Download the software and go to the C Programs Screen to get an idea the level of difficulty. Hmmm - I don't have to 'program' in linuxcnc unless I am doing very very advanced things... Plus everything is configured in one place. sam On 10/9/2012 7:58 AM, andy pugh wrote: On 9 October 2012 12:52, Ron Ginger rongin...@roadrunner.com wrote: Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than use expensive dedicated hardware. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, A Smoothstepper is considerably more expensive than a cheap PC, and can only do one thing. As far as I know a Pokeys isn't a real-time motion control device at all, but a USB HID device? -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
Thanks all for several interesting ideas. I am currently reviewing responses. most of the equipment and the control software for ball pick and place from several bins of balls has been designed and built and tested, but is not yet mounted on the machine or tested all together. I think the difficult part of pick and place is done. I have considered the following approaches to glueing balls into the cavities. 1. a. dispensing a hot melt glue into cavities (exact method to be determined) b. placing balls where desired (possibly only partially in the indentation) c1. pressing down on the balls with a heated plate or iron (more efficient and elegant) c2. heating in oven then pressing down. (less equipment) The only obvious problem seems to be dispensing hot melt glue onto the cavity walls. Using equipment made for reprap experimenters might work if I can find a clear hot melt glue in the thin diameter form factor. Moving small rods of material seems easier than variable viscosity liquids. Dispensing the small ammount needed (aprox .01 - .02 cc) seems much more difficult using much larger diameter glue sticks. 2. dipping the boards The problem is surface clean up. The wood surface should remain appealing without coating the ball tops with anything. if dipped and dried before placing balls. The surfaces could be sanded after drying. What liquid clear adhesive can I activat after drying, method? 3. dipping the marbles How can one remove the glue from the top surface of protruding marbles without causing problems to the surrounding wood surfaces? 4. I will give some thought to dispensing and smearing liquid adhesives, or heated hot melt adhesives with brushes or flaps. craig On 10/9/2012 9:52 AM, dave wrote: On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 08:24 -0400, Bruce Layne wrote: I have a suggestion that's maybe not quite as snarky as Charles' suggestion, but still in the direction of maybe you're optimizing the wrong problem. If I were placing approximately 10,000 marbles or less, I probably wouldn't try to develop a method of having the machine do it. I'd make relatively minor changes to optimize the operation for manual assembly. I have an EFD 1500XL fluid dispensing system. It has a couple of operating modes, but in this case, it's basically a syringe full of epoxy with a regulated air supply that can be applied over the epoxy to precisely dispense it through a needle. Press the foot pedal and a thin bead of epoxy is dispensed as you move the tip of the needle around the upper rim of the concave pocket. Release the foot pedal and a slight vacuum is applied over the epoxy in the syringe to keep it from dripping. The positive pressure can be adjusted for the flow rate you want, and the vacuum can be adjusted for the fluid pull-back you want for your application. It's now a one handed operation, leaving your other hand free for placing marbles. You can buy a used EFD on eBay, probably for $100, use it for this project, and then sell it for what you paid for it. Dispensing epoxy is a bit tricky, because it's curing in the syringe, and the viscosity is changing. The trick is to use a slow epoxy with a 6 hour cure rate, and that should give you a 1-2 hour working pot life. You might need to bump up the dispense pressure slightly toward the end. Slow epoxies tend to be watery. If you want thicker epoxy to give you a little more time to place the marble, you can mix in materials like cabosil to increase the viscosity to make it easier to use on vertical surfaces, and use a larger bore needle. I recommended this approach because we often tend to focus our efficiency efforts on making the machine do all of the work, but many times, the fastest CNC throughput is achieved by an appropriate division of labor between the machine and the operator. For example, if the machine was a blur-of-motion SCARA assembly robot that could place all of the adhesive and marbles in five seconds, that's five seconds added to the cycle time. If the operator is placing the adhesive and marbles, all you'd need to do is keep up with the machine's ability to make the holes and there would be no increase in cycle time. Basically, if you're trying to maximize the rate of production, it does you no good at all to devise some clever method for the machine to dispense epoxy and perform a pick and place operation with the marbles, if that leaves you standing there watching the machine with nothing to do but juggle your marbles. However, if you have issues with operator fatigue or quality that can't be addressed with precision dispensing tools, or you simply have a hobby interest in solving the technical challenge of getting a machine to glue marbles into holes, then by all means, go for that technical solution and post a YouTube video. I love stuff like that! Andy had some great suggestions in that vein, as
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012, at 03:03 PM, craig wrote: Thanks all for several interesting ideas. I am currently reviewing responses. 3. dipping the marbles How can one remove the glue from the top surface of protruding marbles without causing problems to the surrounding wood surfaces? Grab the marble from the top (suction device of some type), and dip only the lower 1/4 or 1/3 of it into the glue, then immediately place it into the recess in the wood. Glue never gets on top of the marble, thus never needs removed. Or am I visualizing things wrong? I'm thinking the marbles are setting in shallow countersink type holes, with 3/4 or so of the marble sticking out on the good side of the board. If the marble is setting much deeper in a nearly full diameter hole, and is inserted from the back side, then I agree that getting glue off the bottom of the marble is a problem. It seems like in that case you need to apply glue only to the equator of the marble. If using a hot-melt type glue, grab it from the top as before, then move it to a glue dispense station and orbit over a stationary glue extruder nozzle, then move to the board and insert. If gluing into a countersink, the nozzle could point straight up, and you would orbit over it. If you want glue on the equator, the nozzle could be near-horizontal, and you would approach it horizontally, then use the spindle to rotate the marble one full turn while dispensing. In either case, there might be an advantage to holding the marble in the stream of a hot air gun before applying the hot glue. -- John Kasunich jmkasun...@fastmail.fm -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 3:23 PM, John Kasunich jmkasun...@fastmail.fm wrote: dip only the lower 1/4 or 1/3 of it into the glue, then immediately place it into the recess in the wood. Glue never gets on top of the marble, thus never needs removed. The marbles partly protrude though the bottom of the board. Can't dip the marbles. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
Why not make the holes tight enough that the marbles are a press fit, therefore not needing any glue. - Original Message - I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). A pattern of shaped holes is cut in the wood with a small cnc router using 2 tools. A 1/4 ball nose mill cuts to approximately 4mm depth. A 3/16 tool then cuts the rest of the way through he wood. additional surface patterns may also be cut. The balls are then glued into the holes with a clear adhesive ( currently a thinned clear caulking compound). The resulting items are interesting viewed directly or back-lit. The problem: The marbles are currently glued in by hand. Painting the glue into the holes, placing the ball and pressing it down gets tedious. I would like to automate this process by replacing the spindle with other equipment. I can automate the pick and placement of the balls. ( spheres may be the easiest item to pick and place) But I have not found a good way to automate the gluing process inexpensively. suggestions? Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated. Craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Todd Zuercher mailto:zuerc...@embarqmail.com -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 12:03 -0700, craig wrote: Thanks all for several interesting ideas. I am currently reviewing responses. most of the equipment and the control software for ball pick and place from several bins of balls has been designed and built and tested, but is not yet mounted on the machine or tested all together. I think the difficult part of pick and place is done. I have considered the following approaches to glueing balls into the cavities. 1. a. dispensing a hot melt glue into cavities (exact method to be determined) b. placing balls where desired (possibly only partially in the indentation) c1. pressing down on the balls with a heated plate or iron (more efficient and elegant) c2. heating in oven then pressing down. (less equipment) The only obvious problem seems to be dispensing hot melt glue onto the cavity walls. Don't forget ultrasonic welding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_welding If there were already a bead of hot glue in the cup or on the ball, the joint can be heated ultrasonically. Using equipment made for reprap experimenters might work if I can find a clear hot melt glue in the thin diameter form factor. Moving small rods of material seems easier than variable viscosity liquids. Dispensing the small ammount needed (aprox .01 - .02 cc) seems much more difficult using much larger diameter glue sticks. I would tend to use a normal glue gun, then add a stick pusher/puller. The ball picker that also rotates could pick up a ball, pass it to a glue dispenser or glue gun and rotate a bead on the joint area, then place it in the cup. A UV cure adhesive might be handy and might use an automatic syringe. 2. dipping the boards The problem is surface clean up. The wood surface should remain appealing without coating the ball tops with anything. if dipped and dried before placing balls. The surfaces could be sanded after drying. What liquid clear adhesive can I activat after drying, method? 3. dipping the marbles How can one remove the glue from the top surface of protruding marbles without causing problems to the surrounding wood surfaces? I like the rubber ball idea mentioned earlier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pad_printing 4. I will give some thought to dispensing and smearing liquid adhesives, or heated hot melt adhesives with brushes or flaps. ... snip -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
What if you used something that had like an annulus opening that the glue was pumped through? Imagine two tubes one inside the other and the glue coming out in the gap between the two. Maybe you could blow air through the center of the inner tube to keep glue out of it and there fore off the bottom of the marble. On 10/09/2012 12:28 PM, Stephen Dubovsky wrote: On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 3:23 PM, John Kasunichjmkasun...@fastmail.fm wrote: dip only the lower 1/4 or 1/3 of it into the glue, then immediately place it into the recess in the wood. Glue never gets on top of the marble, thus never needs removed. The marbles partly protrude though the bottom of the board. Can't dip the marbles. -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 16:00 -0400, Todd Zuercher wrote: Why not make the holes tight enough that the marbles are a press fit, therefore not needing any glue. - Original Message - I have a CNC related problem. I am making small decorative personal gifts using thin wood (5-6mm - 1/4 inch thick) and 6mm diameter colored glass balls (small marbles). ... snip I believe the wood base may split or release balls when the weather changes, maybe? I suppose any retention system will need to address this. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
How about a light/UV cure adhesive? Look up Loctite 5055 or 5056. Drop the ball in, give a little squirt of one of these, then hit it with the light from a bunch of UV LEDs in the 320 nm - 420 nm range. These sorts of LEDs are readily available now for just over a buck each. N. Christopher Perry On Oct 9, 2012, at 15:03, craig cr...@facework.com wrote: Thanks all for several interesting ideas. I am currently reviewing responses. most of the equipment and the control software for ball pick and place from several bins of balls has been designed and built and tested, but is not yet mounted on the machine or tested all together. I think the difficult part of pick and place is done. I have considered the following approaches to glueing balls into the cavities. 1. a. dispensing a hot melt glue into cavities (exact method to be determined) b. placing balls where desired (possibly only partially in the indentation) c1. pressing down on the balls with a heated plate or iron (more efficient and elegant) c2. heating in oven then pressing down. (less equipment) The only obvious problem seems to be dispensing hot melt glue onto the cavity walls. Using equipment made for reprap experimenters might work if I can find a clear hot melt glue in the thin diameter form factor. Moving small rods of material seems easier than variable viscosity liquids. Dispensing the small ammount needed (aprox .01 - .02 cc) seems much more difficult using much larger diameter glue sticks. 2. dipping the boards The problem is surface clean up. The wood surface should remain appealing without coating the ball tops with anything. if dipped and dried before placing balls. The surfaces could be sanded after drying. What liquid clear adhesive can I activat after drying, method? 3. dipping the marbles How can one remove the glue from the top surface of protruding marbles without causing problems to the surrounding wood surfaces? 4. I will give some thought to dispensing and smearing liquid adhesives, or heated hot melt adhesives with brushes or flaps. craig On 10/9/2012 9:52 AM, dave wrote: On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 08:24 -0400, Bruce Layne wrote: I have a suggestion that's maybe not quite as snarky as Charles' suggestion, but still in the direction of maybe you're optimizing the wrong problem. If I were placing approximately 10,000 marbles or less, I probably wouldn't try to develop a method of having the machine do it. I'd make relatively minor changes to optimize the operation for manual assembly. I have an EFD 1500XL fluid dispensing system. It has a couple of operating modes, but in this case, it's basically a syringe full of epoxy with a regulated air supply that can be applied over the epoxy to precisely dispense it through a needle. Press the foot pedal and a thin bead of epoxy is dispensed as you move the tip of the needle around the upper rim of the concave pocket. Release the foot pedal and a slight vacuum is applied over the epoxy in the syringe to keep it from dripping. The positive pressure can be adjusted for the flow rate you want, and the vacuum can be adjusted for the fluid pull-back you want for your application. It's now a one handed operation, leaving your other hand free for placing marbles. You can buy a used EFD on eBay, probably for $100, use it for this project, and then sell it for what you paid for it. Dispensing epoxy is a bit tricky, because it's curing in the syringe, and the viscosity is changing. The trick is to use a slow epoxy with a 6 hour cure rate, and that should give you a 1-2 hour working pot life. You might need to bump up the dispense pressure slightly toward the end. Slow epoxies tend to be watery. If you want thicker epoxy to give you a little more time to place the marble, you can mix in materials like cabosil to increase the viscosity to make it easier to use on vertical surfaces, and use a larger bore needle. I recommended this approach because we often tend to focus our efficiency efforts on making the machine do all of the work, but many times, the fastest CNC throughput is achieved by an appropriate division of labor between the machine and the operator. For example, if the machine was a blur-of-motion SCARA assembly robot that could place all of the adhesive and marbles in five seconds, that's five seconds added to the cycle time. If the operator is placing the adhesive and marbles, all you'd need to do is keep up with the machine's ability to make the holes and there would be no increase in cycle time. Basically, if you're trying to maximize the rate of production, it does you no good at all to devise some clever method for the machine to dispense epoxy and perform a pick and place operation with the marbles, if that leaves you standing there watching the machine with nothing to do but juggle your
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
Clarification: Automation note: The pick and place equipment does not pick up balls. It simply gates one one out of the selected bin and drops it down plastic tubing to the spindle replacement where it is dropped into place. Flexible plastic tubing permits the placement of the bins off the CNC equipment used for x,y placement. My Java design code creates g-code text files for milling holes and surface designs. It will be extended also create a second file with the same g-codes for x,y ball locations and commands selecting ball bins and reading sensors verifying pick and place operations. From hand placement: When placed the balls are slightly less than half above the surface. 6mm diameter marbles are embedded 3mm to 3.5 mm. The marbles do not protrude through the bottom of the board. Less than 1/2 embedded balls are much easier to break out with side torque. The bottom of the balls is usually at least 1 to 2 mm above the bottom. Things vary with wood thickness. Small amounts of transparent glue in the hole under the balls is OK for most designs. l will post pictures of some designs when I find the camera. Our poltergeist seems to have hidden it. The link will be posted when pictures are posted. The caulking compounds like I am using now are somewhat flexible. Differential thermal and humidity expansion has not been a problem. Most hot melt glues should also be adequately elastic. craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
The reality is that a modern dual core mini itx PC board has plenty of power to drive a 3+ axis cnc machine while displaying a GUI in high res. I've done it, it works, no issues. So I don't think there is a speed problem at all regarding PC horsepower. I think there used to be one when we were dealing with 400 mhz single core X86 CPUs, but not with 1.8 ghz dual cores. Adding a lot of intelligent hardware to offload the PC tasks is simply not needed with LinuxCNC. It is not that we don't want to do it, it is not necessary at all, and probably undesirable. If you do the isol_cpu thing in grub with LinuxCNC it sticks all of your realtime tasks onto one core of a dual core cpu board. So you have almost two computers in one anyway. LinuxCNC does not suffer from the lack of a realtime OS as does Mach3/4.Getting repeatable millisecond response times out of the PC is not difficult with LinuxCNC. The number one problem with Mach3 is that it runs on Windows without the benefits of a RTOS.Because of that it currently has to utilize Arts LPT port stepper driver or offload ANY time critical processing to another CPU on an intelligent card via buffering ( like the Smoothstepper ). The Ethernet smoothstepper at $189 is not cheap. Especially when you add up the entire package: PC + Window$ + Mach3/4 + Smoothstepper + I/O break out for SS. You will eat up more than half a Kilo-buck on hardware and software before you have anything put together. Then you are stuck with whatever bugs the intelligent card developer left you with. Add up the costs for the Dynomotion cardset and you will tear up a $500 bill just on Dynomotion hardware before you fire up your C compiler so you can use it with Mach3. 8-OThat seems like an extreme effort just to avoid Linux. I have two Raspberry Pis now and they are slick little devices that consume very little power. I have one setup as a LAMP server with a full Apache install and it works. Not exactly a speed demon but it serves up web pages pretty quickly. I can control the I/O pins via a web page with some embedded PHP code. Next up is some python apps to actually make it control something.. I think it will make a good dirt cheap controller for remotely monitored applications via the web, or wifi or cell modem. That said I don't think it would make a good general purpose CNC controller unless it was greatly expanded with other hardware, and even then it would be very limited. Dave On 10/9/2012 1:27 PM, Ron Ginger wrote: On 10/9/2012 9:02 AM, emc-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote: Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full of micros) must be used as the machine control? That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than use expensive dedicated hardware. Might have been more true in 199? when EMC was started, not so true today. Micros are almost giveaway items now. With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, A Smoothstepper is considerably more expensive than a cheap PC, and can only do one thing. As far as I know a Pokeys isn't a real-time motion control device at all, but a USB HID device? Pokeys now has a motion control option- it will be shipping for Mach4. ron ginger -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Gluing little balls
Another way you can do the glue application is to use a glue fountain.. use a pump to push the glue into a vertical tube that flows back on itself via gravity. Then raise the fountain or lower the board onto the fountain to just touch the glue to the surface. I have seen a number of variations of this same idea used for flux, lube, and glue applications. I'd look into glue that sets via ultraviolet light, so you don't have to deal with it setting up in the equipment. Dave On 10/9/2012 6:42 PM, craig wrote: Clarification: Automation note: The pick and place equipment does not pick up balls. It simply gates one one out of the selected bin and drops it down plastic tubing to the spindle replacement where it is dropped into place. Flexible plastic tubing permits the placement of the bins off the CNC equipment used for x,y placement. My Java design code creates g-code text files for milling holes and surface designs. It will be extended also create a second file with the same g-codes for x,y ball locations and commands selecting ball bins and reading sensors verifying pick and place operations. From hand placement: When placed the balls are slightly less than half above the surface. 6mm diameter marbles are embedded 3mm to 3.5 mm. The marbles do not protrude through the bottom of the board. Less than 1/2 embedded balls are much easier to break out with side torque. The bottom of the balls is usually at least 1 to 2 mm above the bottom. Things vary with wood thickness. Small amounts of transparent glue in the hole under the balls is OK for most designs. l will post pictures of some designs when I find the camera. Our poltergeist seems to have hidden it. The link will be posted when pictures are posted. The caulking compounds like I am using now are somewhat flexible. Differential thermal and humidity expansion has not been a problem. Most hot melt glues should also be adequately elastic. craig -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux
I always surf the net while the CNC programs are running, I see nothing wrong with that. I play music and watch youtube videos also. What is the hourly rate for watching ytube? I need to know so I can tell my customers.This sounds like more fun than running another machine. Just kidding Terry - Original Message - From: Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Cc: Sent: Monday, October 8, 2012 12:11 PM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Mach on Linux On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Roland Jollivet roland.jolli...@gmail.comwrote: On 7 October 2012 19:11, Len Shelton l...@probotix.com wrote: Most people choose Mach3 because they want to have a single box to run their CAD, CAM, control software on, or they are just afraid of Linux. What is not obvious is that to get it to even be half-way reliable - you have to strip down Windows to bare bones operation and never run any other software on that machine - which completely defeats the purpose. snip.. Why is that Lcnc users insist on doing everything on one machine? Like surfing the net while the machine is running. I always surf the net while the CNC programs are running, I see nothing wrong with that. I play music and watch youtube videos also. i I still don't get it. I imagine most Mach users do strip the junk out and use their box for what it's supposed to be: a machine controller. Do users of industrial Fanuc machines complain there is no game port on the side of the box? I think the biggest problem with the acceptance on Lcnc to newbies is trying to get a system up and working. Surely if Lcnc developers took a single (older) Ubuntu version, or whatever package, and kept upgrading Lcnc to that only, then there would be no problem of the latest 2GHz machines and up, not meeting the latency requirements. The latest version of Lcnc should be able to run?? on almost any hardware because the basic requiements have not changed since the first stepper systems came out. Admittedly, this does come from personal frustration, because I've gone through the schlep of converting at least 6 W$ PC's to Linux and running EMC, but none of them every had good enough latency. So I (more schlep) convert back to XP and run Mach with no problems. My firm belief is that Lcnc, Mach, and whoever else, should be aiming for headless systems. Stick the control box in the cabinet, and it's just.. a machine controller. Just.. like every industrial system. Then you play games and surf and run cad programs on the linked, desk PC. Regards Roland -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
