"* A GUI that is more familiar to the 3D crows than Axis (and hopefully a lot less CPU intensive) would be *VERY* useful and *GREATLY* appreciated!!!!"
That is my next project for machining after my current project. I have a gantry mill that I have been monkeying around with. Bought a extrusion head and been looking at how to control it. Some observations: 1) None of the current GUIs are really good for this, however, gscreen has some options. gscreen.gaxis looks to be the most likely candidate for a crew who are not familiar with machining. 2) We need some specific hooks for 3D printing. Items that are similar to spindle speed - the ability to change the feed rate of filament as well as how thick the layer is needs to be done. Running filament through the extruder will need calibration capability. Keeping the spool sync'd with the filament feed rate is also an issue as current solutions don't scale up that well. Stick a big spool on it and your stepper running the extruder won't be able to keep rotating a large mass.. Right now, I am using the A axis for extruder feed, but converting rotational rate into linear feedrate/thickness is somewhat esoteric. 3) PWM to control the heating element. (The cherry filament can change color based on temperature, so you can get some really cool grain effects). 4) Temperature reading. 5) The vast majority of 3D printing is done by people with zero CAD or machining background. They are pulling 3D items from thingiverse, running it through slic3r, then printing it. I'd like to see linuxcnc develop a repository concept. The ability to have system pull down designs from any number of sources. I am planning on packaging designs using .deb packages, then just install using standard system tools, but realistically, people will be pulling designs from any number of places, so wget, rsync, zip, git, or any number of other formats could be supported. I proposed an idea on reprap's forum awhile back that did not get a lot of traction, but I think it might be a valid idea anyway. Create an xml file with a lot of base information about a CAD file, or g-code. Maybe throw in a couple thumbnails. Then, you can write a script that could generate a zip file, .deb package, import into git, or whatever. (OK.. my pet project, but you get the idea.) With some hooks, you could have some self awareness within linuxcnc about the designs available by reading said xml files. When you are talking 3D printing, people could literally have 1000's of designs they have downloaded on their systems with no real way to track or maintain them. TL;DR - a button or pulldown in linuxcnc to import designs onto the computer. 6) Multiple extruder nozzles are treated like tool changers, but I would change the GUI readouts to use 3D terminology. The tool table should reflect the various types of filaments and their characteristics. The ability to print multiple materials in a single run is going to get huge as the tech goes forward. "* A "LinuxCNC 101" that reviews the basics of LinuxCNC targeted at users who have no machining background. For example current 3D printer software has no concept of different coordinate spaces, so homing, touch-off, and similar are very confusing in LinuxCNC until you realize what's going on under the hood. If something like this exists already, please send me a link!" I could say a number of things here, some of which is quite rude. Other parts would be a lot more positive. A lot of the more successful machines right now are pushing as much of the machining steps into hardware as possible. The reprap paradigm is that firmware does the machining concepts. "* LinuxCNC ini/hal configuration tweaks that make LinuxCNC easier to use for the targeted audience. For instance, when I first started using LinuxCNC, I got lots of errors like "You can't do that when not homed". On the typical 3D firmware, you just start it up and start moving around. I think there are ways to configure LinuxCNC to be more like that, but I'm not sure exactly how." I feel your pain there. I'm going to hold off posting outside the LinuxCNC community for a bit to get a bit better out-of-box experience. But I'm not going to wait too long, and I'm not really the guy you would assign to "user experience" tweaking (I'm more the hardware/device-driver guy). So jump right in and help out if you're good with LinuxCNC integration! Charles Buckley On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Charles Steinkuehler < char...@steinkuehler.net> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I have prepared the first beta machinekit release of LinuxCNC for the > BeagleBone. > > Unlike the previous images released by Michael Haberler, this image is > built automatically from the ground up. [1] > > ========================= > = QUICK AND DIRTY HOWTO = > ========================= > > STEP 1: Write the SD card > ========================= > > Grab the machinekit image: > > > http://www.machinekit.net/deb/rootfs/wheezy/debian-7.0.0-machinekit-armhf-2013-06-11.tar.xz > > Untar the image, and run the setup_sdcard.sh script in the resulting > directory, selecting the 3.8 dtb kernel: > > sudo ./setup_sdcard.sh --mmc /dev/sdX --uboot bone_dtb > > If you need more hand-holding, see the elinux Debian page: > > http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian > > STEP 2: One-time setup > ====================== > > The image build scripts are not yet perfect, so there's some minor > tweaking you have to do once per image. > > BeagleBone Black Only: Edit /boot/uboot/uEnv.txt to disable HDMI and > the on-board eMMC: > > optargs=capemgr.disable_partno=BB-BONELT-HDMI,BB-BONE-EMMC-2G > > Reboot > > Start here if you've got a BBW: > > cd ~/configs/pru-examples > > sudo ./dtc.sh > > > STEP 3: Each Reboot > =================== > > Some hardware setup needs to be done once per reboot: > > cd ~/linuxcnc/configs/pru-examples > > sudo su -c "echo BB-LCNC-BEBOPR > /sys/devices/bone_capemgr.*/slots" > sudo ./BeBoPr.setup.sh > > > STEP 4: Each Shell > ================== > > Now you just have to setup LinuxCNC and run it. Make sure you have > X11 forwarding enabled, or have set the DISPLAY variable to point to > an open X server: > > cd ~/linuxcnc > . scripts/rip-environment > linuxcnc & > > > STEP 5: HELP IMPROVE THE EXPERIENCE > =================================== > > I am hopefully going to be releasing this on the 3D crowd soon, and > this could very well be their first exposure to LinuxCNC. I would > *REALLY* like some help from the community to insure their experience > is a good one. I will be tweaking the image so the above setup steps > are not required. What I need help with is the LinuxCNC configuration > side of things. > > If you can't think of anything to help with: > > * A GUI that is more familiar to the 3D crows than Axis (and hopefully > a lot less CPU intensive) would be *VERY* useful and *GREATLY* > appreciated!!!! > > * A "LinuxCNC 101" that reviews the basics of LinuxCNC targeted at > users who have no machining background. For example current 3D > printer software has no concept of different coordinate spaces, so > homing, touch-off, and similar are very confusing in LinuxCNC until > you realize what's going on under the hood. If something like this > exists already, please send me a link! > > * LinuxCNC ini/hal configuration tweaks that make LinuxCNC easier to > use for the targeted audience. For instance, when I first started > using LinuxCNC, I got lots of errors like "You can't do that when not > homed". On the typical 3D firmware, you just start it up and start > moving around. I think there are ways to configure LinuxCNC to be > more like that, but I'm not sure exactly how. > > I'm going to hold off posting outside the LinuxCNC community for a bit > to get a bit better out-of-box experience. But I'm not going to wait > too long, and I'm not really the guy you would assign to "user > experience" tweaking (I'm more the hardware/device-driver guy). > > So jump right in and help out if you're good with LinuxCNC integration! > > - -- > Charles Steinkuehler > char...@steinkuehler.net > > [1] So you want to make your own image files? Grab my modified > version of Robert C Nelson's build scripts from github: > > https://github.com/cdsteinkuehler/omap-image-builder > > Make sure you've got several GB free both in /tmp and where you > download the build scripts. Change to the working directory and run: > > ./build_image.sh > > ...the grab a coffee, go for a stroll, watch a movie, walk the dog, > and when you get back you won't have too long to wait (it takes a > while to build from scratch). :) > > Builds are supported on the armv7l (native) and x86 (uses > qemu-arm-static for transparent emulation) architectures. The image I > released above was created on an x86 system, including the LinuxCNC > compile. > > AFAIK, the only magic black-box binary blob getting pulled in is > Michael's xenomai kernel, and he's got the bits needed to rebuild it > online. There are some other tools pulled in by the RCN scripts, but > I believe all of those have their own source repositories (all of them > I've checked on so far do) should you wish to rebuild totally from > scratch. > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAlG3QaAACgkQLywbqEHdNFzrbQCgqI7eQer+bCD5q7GmbbVPBW3O > d+AAoIGTtOVEYEgz4I5Ghj/aUXzVLoTQ > =RsY3 > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: > > Build for Windows Store. > > http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
