For a full-fledged Press Brake GUI

I'm working on a press brake retrofit and need a GUI for it. This is going to be a full fledged GUI hopefully somewhat universal in hopes of making future press brake retrofits much easier. My goal is to come up with a couple example configs that could be packaged with LinuxCNC. I think I will create it using FlexGUI. My big problem is, I have little experience actually operating press brakes and will need some guideance on what features are required and which ones will just waste screen space.
Any offers to help with the coding will also be appreciated, however, I am willing to jump in myself and see what I can do with it.

I assume it will need at least:
0. Touchscreen freindly.

1. A "status" ribbon across the top displaying current operational status, including color-coding; like red for errors, yellow for warnings, green or blue otherwise.

2. DRO displaying position of movable beam (the die). How about also displaying positions of all axis? I performed service work on a 12 axis press brake a year or two ago, it had Y1, Y2 (left and right side of upper beam). The backstop consisted of two independant 3-axis stops: R1, R2, X1, X2, Z1, Z2. Crowning was 9th axis. Variable width bottom die was 10th axis. Sheet lifter in front of press had height and angle (axis 11-12)...

3. Program bends table. The program will need to contain various parameters for each 'bend' in the part. The table on the 'Run' screen hardly needs to display every fine detail. I'm thinking maybe 4 columns: 'Bend Number', 'Length', 'Angle', 'Notes'.

4. Tonnage control: how visible does this want/need to be for the operator? Least visible = just set it in the programming screen, or more visible, say a big guage displaying tonnage live?

5. Editting the 'part program' should probably be done on a separate tab or screen.
5.a My first version of the editor will be basic: enter the go-to positions for each axis to configure that specific bend.
5.b My goal for a 'real' editor is one where you can select dies, enter tab lengths and bend angles, and it produces the parameters for the bending program. This editor should have a 2D display of dies and plate and can possibly be a separate app.

What am I overlooking?

I will start drawing the ui...

FYI, flexGUI is not part of linuxcnc so a GUI based on it will not be package-able with linuxcnc.
But if you made something in flexGUI, it's probably not that hard to re-imagine it in Gladevcp or Qtvcp afterwards.

I like the idea of a quick drawing for reference.

 I don't know much either. Here is a part I folded a lot in batches of 20.
 

The press brake had the knife and lower V block defined in the commercial control. First I numbered each bend on the paper drawing (6 in total) in the order I wanted to do them
Where a flange had already been folded, I would manually deduct the width of the material (2 mm) for the back gauge
Then I built the bend list as you say bend number, angle, length
From memory, there was a calibration screen that set the angle and it was set to under bend just a little but so we had some adjustment on the first part.

Ideally, the operator would not need to know the axis positions and instead you would calculate that from known maths.

Over time, I tweaked the  dimensions and bends to get as perfect as I could and the job was saved in the control for next time.  Good luck

Fold order: top, ,bottom, left tab, left, right tab, right.

cmorley wrote:

But if you made something in flexGUI, it's probably not that hard to re-imagine it in Gladevcp or Qtvcp afterwards.
 

That is wonderful news. I am familiar with Gladevcp. I was reading lately how glade is outdated and Qt5/6 related is the way to go. I had made up my mind this is the project where I'll learn flexGUI. My enthusiasm failed me after I dived into it yesterday. I will happily continue with Gladevcp. I will learn FlexGUI eventually, but not in time for this project.

I've got a press retrofit in progress and this sounds great.  I've got quite a bit of work to do hardware wise, but I'd be happy to test when I get things moving.