karlkec wrote: Hi Chris,
I hope your holiday was (is?) an enjoyable one.
I'm really glad to see Gscreen coming along. I'm sure it will be useful for a lot of people. On my simulator it's working great. I should have a chance to try it out on the mill later this week.
I've got some requests and questions. See what you and others think:
1. Right now we use Touchy with a touchscreen. We have a jogwheel on the control panel which is used for jogging, but can also be used to set overrides in touchy. It would be nice to do that in Gscreen too. That way, after selecting which override I could adjust it while watching the cut, without looking at the screen. We have a signed 32bit value from the jogwheel that we can used for this. A 1 percent override per count of the wheel should be about right.
2. I know the backplot can be zoomed from the graphics and zoom buttons, and from the scroll wheel on the mouse. On the mill we have a track ball, but no scroll wheel. Would it be possible to zoom the backplot by holding a key (ctrl?) and moving the track ball? I think Axis does this.
3. I really like the integrated tool table editor. Could it only show as many axes as are needed for the machine?
4. Maybe change the Tooleditor tab to a Setup tab? It could include the tool table editor as well as a tool touchoff button, the zero origin button, and offset origin button. We have a tool changer on the mill, so for us it would be nice if a Setup tab had the capability of changing tools too.
5. This is really minor -- it might be easier to have another tab to show offsets, rather than a button.
6. It would be nice for us to have jogging available without having to home the machine first. We don't have a way of moving the axes other than with the servos, and there are times when doing maintenance when I wouldn't want to go through the full travel to the home switch, but still want to jog it a bit this way or that.
7. Another minor point -- show the spindle speed with no decimals (or maybe one).
Gscreen is looking really great. Thanks a lot for all the hard work.
Karl
1) you can almost do this now by using halui override controls. The missing part is the on-screen enable controls.
I could create pins that are true only when one of the override buttons is selected and while not in jogging mode - is that sufficient?
2) it is possible to zoom in anyway you want with a little coding. Is the track ball used like a mouse? so track ball movement is the same as mouse movement?
3) Yes ideally the tool editor display will be more configurable. I hadn't decided how that should work at the time I built it.
4) tool changing requires the machine to be homed that is why I left it off the first screen. I know on my lathe we indexed tools manual fairly often.
I could add it, de-sensitized till homing is done. Could you llive with index next tool or would you need index to a particular tool?
As for tooleditor as a setup tab- I'm not sure what you mean exactly - are you saying you want to be able to set the origin while the tooleditor displays?
5) If tabs are easier to use yes an offset tab could be built.
6) Jogging is available without homing. Homing mode is set automatically when Gscreen is started as that is pretty standard. de-press the homing button on the right side and press the jogging button on the bottom left. If this is an option lots of people want I could add it as a preference.
7) I'll look into it.
Chris M
