18Apr/113
Two Weekends Ago…
So this is a late update. Things have been hectic at the lab, with lots of projects under way. Contests, Art|Exhibits, a few new members, visitors, meetings, and more.
Kyle and TJ were building a CNC router. I don't think it's working yet, but looks very CNC-routerish:
April 19th, 2011 - 10:29
Sounds like you’re not ready to answer this question yet… but how do you input the data telling it where to cut? Do you simply feed it a series of x,y,z coordinates?
April 19th, 2011 - 16:15
Steve – it’s running on software called EMC2, which is an open source CNC control application. EMC2 (and most other applications that drive machinery like CNC routers, lathes, laser engravers, sign cutters and the like) use a file format that contains a standard text definition of movements called gcode. There are a whole bunch of editors for editing gcode files. Programs exist to convert to gcode, but often times it takes tweaking of the file. At the lab we’ve got EMC2 running on several computers and hooked to the robot arm, the laser engraver, and the CNC router(s) will run on it as well. A windows commercial competitor is Mach3.
EMC2 only runs the tools, and doesn’t do a whole lot in the way of CAD work to modify the files.
June 11th, 2011 - 14:49
how about a link to the files for the robot arm for emc2( hal… ect….)