Gscreen - a GTK / Glade / Python based screen

cmorley wrote: How does every one feel about losing the entry widget and just having the numerical keyboard pop up every time you need to set something?

I'm good with this.
Often the same value is entered several times. What do people think of having it default to the value last entered? Pressing one button (clr) gets you back to nothing.

Karl

Rather than having to type something to clear the last entry,
how about using the up/down cursor keys to select from the entry history
so to get to the previous entry, you hit the up arrow. hitting the up arrow again
goes back through the history list and hitting down goes forward (just like the shell)

That's an interesting idea.

But I wonder how often it's needed.
even with my limited cnc experience, I bet just remembering the last number would be enough.

Also I'd have to add up / down keys to the pop up keyboard.

cmorley wrote: AXIS uses touch-off and you pre-select whether its for origin setting or tool setting.

And I forget to pre-select so often that I am probably going to edit Axis on my lathe to have two separate buttons.
(Because if you get it wrong, the whole tool table ends up wrong)

cmorley wrote: How does every one feel about losing the entry widget and just having the numerical keyboard pop up every time you need to set something?

Sounds good

karlkec wrote:

cmorley wrote: at the moment I know that tool setting to a common point is missing, I'm just not sure how best to do it.
AXIS uses touch-off and you pre-select whether its for origin setting or tool setting.
I would like something more obvious.
I could have the tool setting buttons show up when the tool table is showing ....
Chris M

I think having it on the tool table page would work well. Include the ability to change tools from there too (tool index button). Could even highlight the row in the tool table matrix for the currently-loaded tool. When a tool is touched off the values in the tool table matrix should update. My thinking is that the tool table page would have everything necessary to set up all the tools in the changer.

Karl

Yes and Yes

andypugh wrote:

cmorley wrote: AXIS uses touch-off and you pre-select whether its for origin setting or tool setting.

And I forget to pre-select so often that I am probably going to edit Axis on my lathe to have two separate buttons.
(Because if you get it wrong, the whole tool table ends up wrong)

I had that problem so much that I added some pyvcp buttons to do the touch off using G code.

John

Hallo Chris and all the others,

first:
Yes, Gscreen is very easy to customize!
Thanks Chris for giving an name to my custom screen.
From now on it will be called Gmoccapy
(G for Gscreen, mocca for the layout I borrowed an py for Python sound good.

By the way is there anybody willing to test?
You van get the latest from mah git (moccapy_master)

I had the tool editor on my ToDo list!
Better you do the work
I am missing on that page the button to select a tool.
After powering your machine it is needed to set a certain tool,
i.e. the edge finder, but you will have to distinguish two situations,

First situation:
The tool is mounted already in the spindle,
so you will have to give an M61 Q5 to set tool 5
without doing any move off the machine.
I am doing that with a button getting the value from the entry dialog.

The second situation:
There is no tool in the spindle, but you need to get it from the changer,
so you will have to enter T5 M6 resulting
in machine movement.
I do this with an MDI command.
(shouldn't sending any MDI command from a button be integrated in gscreen?)
I couldn' find a function "self.command.mdi("MDI STRING").

Both should only be allowed if machine is in all_homed state!

I was dreaming from an tool editor page where I can just select the tool highlighting the line and press a button!
So the error messages "requested tool 99 not found in the tool table" is gone.

Next question to answer:
For a tool change you have to give first G40 to unselect cutter radius compensation,
then you select the tool and after that you will have to give an G43
to activate tool length compensation.

Should we include this steps in gscreen, or shell this be done in an remap procedure?
(At the moment I have to do it in any gcode program)

I also got a suggestion for the entry dialog.
Why not give the user the possibility to preset the values in the preferences page?
I am making this for the axis touch off buttons, because I use a lot my edge finder with 10 mm diameter,
so the axis X and Y have to be set to -5 mm after touching the workpiece and to touch the Z high I use
an high measure block with have 50 mm when the indicator shows "0".
I just sore the entered values in the preference file.
This could be done also for spindle speed an so on. But do we need really the math functions? I don't think so!

Norbert

Hallo Chris,

I just found:

Entering a non float value in the tool table Z length will give an python exception!
I entered -153,345 (note the "," instead ".") In germany we are used to give values with "," as decimal separator.
Can you add a replace , by . function?

Norbert

newbynobi wrote: Entering a non float value in the tool table Z length will give an python exception!
I entered -153,345 (note the "," instead ".") In germany we are used to give values with "," as decimal separator.

Are you sure that setting the locale doesn't fix that?