cnc-club.ru

Hi,

I would like to ask your hint or advice, what would be the feasible and possible easy way to generate a toolpath.
The challenge is:
There is an approx. 10mm thick wooden material. I have to engrave both sides of it, and the engraving must be very same on both sides. You can imagine like an Mickey Mouse cut out of wood, and on both sides of it is the engraved face and all other details.

I thought that first I have to engrave one side, flip it back, _position_it_in_the_right_place_ than engrave the other side and finally cut it out.
How should I make g-code for the flipped or mirrored image, that I could place exactly in the desired position?

May postprocessing with use of mirroring along Y axis would help?
How would be the syntax for that?

Any advice or help is highly appreciated.

Best regards:
James

How do you generate your Gcode?


When we developed Gcodetools we involved orientation point to solve this problem. You can fix your material by tree bolts using three drill trough holes.
Then you just create tree points Orientation system and place this points to the centers of the holes in certain order for front and back side. After that Gcode should be properly rotated/mirrored and translated.

Hi Nick,

Thank you for the response.
Excuse me, but I still have trouble to understand how to do that.

Is that what you proposed?:
1) Drill three holes (let's say: x1=0, y1=0 x2=150 y2=0 and x3=200 y3=180) and fix the material through them.
2) Use the above points as orinentation points in Gcodetools, and generate the g-code for one side?
3) Flip the material on the reverse side
4) Set new orientation points? To what values? (I want to mirror along Y axis)
5) Generate g-code

See the attachments.
You need to create additional layer with orientation points. Then change poitns place, or their coordinates.
Everything else is the same, you can even export to gcode at once for both sides.
(And add another tool definition with Pause and message in Tool's change Gcode).

PS there's standart post-processor to flip Gcode alog one axis..... you can use it as well.

Hi Nick,

Thanks a lot. I'll try it soon.
Where can I find the documentation or manual about this?

Best regards:
James

Emmm... I do not know
I'm not sure there's manual on that in English...
This is allmost all that we have:
http://cnc-club.ru/forum/viewtopic.php? ... 6924#usage

And probably there are some videos on youtube about Gcodetools....
See those from Matthew Smith - that are great tutorial videos.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gcodetools

Hi Nick,

I tried to produce a flipped G-code for a very basic path in Gcodetools.
So I made the normal G-code and then with postprocessor "flip(x)".
The resulting G-code is exactly the same for the normal and flipped path. What did I do wrong?

I have just checked flip post-processor - it works fine.

Can you attach your svg?

What version of Gcodetools are you using?

Hi Nick,

It's a star shape and rectangle created in 2 seconds in Inkscape,really nothing special. I made it just to verify if my the concept is OK.
I'll be able to attach it later on
Gcodetools ver is 1.7

I believe something went wrong on my side, and that's not an postprocessor issue.

I've checked it on other computer. Under Windows it's working, of course. (some error messages about G02 and G03, but the G-code seems OK)
But anyway I have to check why that's not working on my Ubuntu 10.04.

I'll be back with details.

Hi Nick,

I removed completely my Inkscape 0.47 which was installed on 10.04 Ubuntu and installed 0.48 version. I still had strange things.
Then I deleted ./config/inkscape from my home directory and that resolved all my problems. Everything works well.
Thanks a lot for your help!

I got a warning when I create G-code using flip(x) postproc:" Post-processor: Scale factors for X and Y axis are not the same. G02 and G03 codes will be corrupted."
Shall I ignore it, or something wrong with my setup? The code seems OK for me and for LinuxCNC too.

Does the online manual contain all available postprocessor commands? I'd like to try them.

Regards:
James

James628 писал(а):I got a warning when I create G-code using flip(x) postproc:" Post-processor: Scale factors for X and Y axis are not the same. G02 and G03 codes will be corrupted."

Hmmm ... I do not really know...
Can you try latest -devversion from launchpad?
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~gcodetools ... lope/files
(do not forget to run python create_inx.py to get new inxs)

Here areall available post processors:
self.functions = {
"remap" : self.remap,
"remapi" : self.remapi ,
"scale" : self.scale,
"move" : self.move,
"flip" : self.flip_axis,
"flip_axis" : self.flip_axis,
"round" : self.round_coordinates,
"parameterize" : self.parameterize,
"regex" : self.re_sub_on_gcode_lines,
"remove_a_turns" : self.remove_a_turns,
Most remarkable - regex - most powerful one - applyes defined regex to every string of gcode. Others are not so interesting .
And anyway I suggest to use another layer with another copy of Orientation points - thus it will be easier to put back side in it's exact place.

Nick писал(а):

James628 писал(а):I got a warning when I create G-code using flip(x) postproc:" Post-processor: Scale factors for X and Y axis are not the same. G02 and G03 codes will be corrupted."

Hmmm ... I do not really know...
Can you try latest -devversion from launchpad?

Hi,

I tried the dev version: I can see only the "Gcodetools-dev" line in the Extensions menu, but nothing shows up on the right. Probably caosed by older Ubuntu version (10.04). How could I trace the issue?

Regards:
James

Have you read this:

Nick писал(а):(do not forget to run python create_inx.py to get new inxs)

You need to create inx files by running the script.

Hi Nick,

Sure, I did so. It created a bunch of inx files, which I copied to the extension folder.

Then there should be a "folder" Gcodetools-dev. Can you make a screenshot?
(to capture opened menu - open Screenshot utility and make screenshot with delay, then oren menu)

Nick писал(а):Then there should be a "folder" Gcodetools-dev. Can you make a screenshot?
(to capture opened menu - open Screenshot utility and make screenshot with delay, then oren menu)

No directory was created, just the inx files.

I created by hand one in extension folder and put there inx files. but this didn't help either.

Here goes the screenshot:

hmmm... can you run inkscape from console? It can write threre additional info....

Tried already to run from console, nothing is written to the console either..

hmmmmmmmm... are you sure that all inx files are put into the extensions directory.
Can recheck that files are there, there is "-dev" somewhere in that files and you have permitions ti read them (or permitions for them are the same with the others).

Nick писал(а):hmmmmmmmm... are you sure that all inx files are put into the extensions directory.
Can recheck that files are there, there is "-dev" somewhere in that files and you have permitions ti read them (or permitions for them are the same with the others).

I listed the content of the extension directory (ls -al). Here is part of it: