There are several ways to accomplish a mirror image machining, and different methods will be better in different situations depending on the machine's capabilities and the person's inclinations.
On my stepper driven CNC router, I have no limit switches because the worst crash isn't fast enough or powerful enough to hurt anything. My standard procedure to home the machine is to jog to the lower left corner against the mechanical hard stops and set that as X=0 and Y=0. For the 24" X 24" router, I configured the soft limits at Xmin = -25, Xmax = +25, Ymin = -25 and Ymax = +25, so no matter where I set the X=0 and Y=0, it shouldn't generate a soft limit error unless something is seriously wrong with the G code. On such a machine, the easiest way for me to mirror a part would be to run Stepconf and reverse the motion of the X or Y axis. If I needed to mirror parts more than once, I'd probably save a configuration for X mirroring and another for Y mirroring, and simply run LinuxCNC by clicking those icons when I needed a mirror image part. Home the X and Y axes to the appropriate point and Bob's your uncle. I figure this should be an easy method, given that when configuring a new machine, I have an axis initially going the wrong direction 50.666% of the time. Statistics would indicate that I should get it right 50% of the time, but I figure the other .666% of the time is a rounding error, The Dark Side of The Force, or (my preferred explanation)... the awesome power of my subconscious mind to outsmart myself. In theory, you could probably do the mirror configuration trick with a servo system as well, but I'm less familiar with that configuration process lately. It would only take a few minutes to try it. This more hardware oriented approach reminds me of a late 1970s quote from Steve Ciarcia in Byte magazine's Circuit Cellar column: "My favorite programming language is SOLDER." If you have stepper motor leads with quick disconnect spade connectors (or wire nuts!), you could also swap some leads. Some DPDT switches (flipped only when the power is OFF!) could accomplish the same thing if you regularly made mirrored parts, similar to the wire EDM example earlier in this thread. So there are a couple of answers to a slightly different question than you asked, but options are good... right? :-) On 02/13/2016 04:18 AM, Gregg Eshelman wrote: > Is there a program, preferably for Windows, that can read a G-code file > and make an altered copy to produce a file that will produce a mirror > image of the original? > > I've done one that took quite a lot of work to get right, now I need the > code to cut the same part for the other side of the car. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
