G83Extended High Speed Asymmetrical Parametric File Converter

[dave benson]

Some of the plugins I made were to help myself first and foremost, so that fact you will personally benefit from this plugin is great and that alone makes all your work worthwhile. 

Eddy, "Necessity is the Mother of Invention", as this machine has 500 yarns capacity over the two meters of sewing width.
Each Yarn requires 12 holes, three of which are tapped to M3 of various depths, so that's 1500 M3 tapped holes.
Each of the Drilled and tapped holes are in different materials, cold rolled steel,Free Machining Steel and Aluminium.
Each hole intersects either with another hole at a fairly acute angle, or perpendicular to the surface.

All of the work on the plugin to this point, has been aimed at doing this last file, which promptly broke the plugin when I tried it
I had reserved enough memory for 50 individual Drilling mop's and this one has 225. I've now reserved enough for 300.

I also added some more information to the Info panel and included some more info in the
generated Gcode so that you can reproduce the settings used for Drilling and tapping in the file.

On the surface (looking down on top of the part in the plan view pic 1) this file looks very straight forward, just a simple grid
series of holes drilled into a trapezoidal shape, and as often happens 'the devil is in the detail' as when viewed in the ZX plane
in can be seen that the holes form an ascending staircase in the Z plane. pic2 and 2a.
This is because the holes are five degrees off perpendicular setting the shear angle of the knives they hold.
So to drill the part, it has to be set at an angle on the mill table or on an angle plate, which means that the Stock surface,
Retract height,Target depth and Clearance plane change with each hole in sequence.

With all those mops (225) I made some mistakes entering the data in the fields and finding and fixing them was a
long a torturous process which is why I made the mass mop editor and during the production of this file. I added some
math methods like replace a value,add and subtract to the existing value and setting values to auto or default.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that if you click in the info panel (remember to refresh it beforehand) you can use the
arrow keys to navigate around.
One thing I will do in the future is make the info panel properties editable as this would make the whole 'Editing Process'
of the mops properties much faster and more intuitive.

I've placed a new version in the zip file, and if time permits post a cut down version of this file maybe 10 holes as an
example of drilling holes in 3D space rather than flat on the X,Y plane.

Dave 

[dave benson]

more pics

[dave benson]

zip file .dll

[dave benson]

last pic

[dave benson]

I've finally wrangled this last file into submission, and because it had so many individual mops
225, it was hard to keep track of them all so I've added the ability to save and load a prefs
file so that you can work on a file over many sessions you can also edit the fields in the info pane too now.
I've also added a check box to make the comments compatible with GRBL's input
command line length limit, the line length is capped at 50 characters.
I've also made a PP called GrblG83Extended.
If you generate a file with this PP  and select a drilling mop and set the peck distance to
anything other that 0, then load the plugin, check the GRBL Format checkbox and make your drilling cycle and generate the file.
This is the file to run in GRBL powered machines.
just to be clear the .dll iis in with the new example files.
Dave
EDIT TO ADD:
I drilled the last file and it works fine, I did find a bug though, so here is and new release version
sans the bug. an extra line was being added that shouldn't have been.

[dave benson]

While rummaging around today I found a atmega2560 and thought I would test the GRBL plugin
and so downloaded Grbl and flashed the microcontroller.
There were a few Hiccups, one being that the PP was leaving some G80's G98's in the code
that needed to be there to activate the plugin so that it knows which mops to adjust.
This cannot be fixed at the PP level and I didn't want to write a PP just to do that trivial task
so I've incorporated it into the Gcode engine logic in the plugin.
Now finally it works properly. I like the GRBL plugin it works nice.
So if you have a GRBL powered machine you can now use the plugin.

First you start a new drawing with the PP I've included, Draw you shapes and apply mops to then
and you can use the standard G81 drilling mop to drill holes just like you would normally do with another PP.
If you want to do a fancy drilling cycle then  open the plugin and select and apply
your settings for the mop.
Check the GRBL Format button.
Generate the code, you will get a new file like this in my case shown in the pic
NEW KNIFEBLOCK plus plugin new angle G83Extended Tapping Included.nc
Now select the GRBLMachine Tab and load up the file (for me) the file above.
You have to do this else the plugin will use the file from CB.
GRBLMachine will ask if you want to use the GRBLMachine Plugin PP instead of the one were using.
click NO and the code will load and of you go.

Dave

[dave benson]

I've been playing around with GRBL a bit, and I think it would be good enough too make a multi-axis
grinder to grind some pins I have for particular job with a profile, you could also grind squares and hex's ect.
So I downloaded a 4TH Axis fork of GRBL and tested it in GRBLMachine (it wont show the 4TH Axis) but
works fine.
This means that you can Drill and Tap with grbl (just generate the code for the A Axis) instead of the B Axis.
Here is the 4TH Axis fork of GRBL that I used. https://github.com/dguerizec/grbl-Mega-4axis
I have an ICE programmer and the process of flashing was pretty quick.

I have already made a manual version of the grinder however it's a slow process it has a manual indexer which
is better than nothing, but one profile requires that (just like on a Mill and lathe sometimes) you have to crank
both handles at once and although I became fairly proficient after a lot of practice, not one of them was exactly
the same, so automating the process will save a lot of time but more importantly the finished items will be better
Quality.

What I would like to do is, be able to draw the profile shapes in CB and run the code in GRBLMachine.
I'm thinking right now that I'd need a plugin to convert X and Y to Y and A and it would be kinda nice to
to use the Z Axis to move the grinding head closer to the wheel to compensate for the wheel wear.
We'll see.
I also discovered a bug where, if all you have in the drawing is one Drilling mop and then you select it from the dropdown
box, then could not be processed as I've rather absently mindedly set it's default to 1 and not 0, and have fixed this in this new version
.
I'll also post the file in the pic so that you can run it yourself, remember you need to have the
fork of GRBL above or you can use a 5 Axis plugin which is on github to do tapping else
you can use the Drilling cycles with the standard version of GRBL and GRBLMachine.

Dave

[dave benson]

Here is a new version, as today I used the plugin for the first time in anger for drilling and tapping
All the work pieces for the new multi-Axis grinder project.
I was in a hurry to cut some chips and get the job done and copy and pasted a part and it's MOPS
to another new part but did not re-name the mops, and as the plugin is looking for mop names
it found the identical mop names and applied the variables to it AND the other mops, this is ok
if the two mops are identical but if they have different settings e.g. target depth is different then
this will cause trouble.
The plugin would not warn you that there are duplicate mop names, it does now.
I was hoping to get the grinder to a greater stage of completion but had to make two fixtures to hold
the parts and this took most of the day. so I've only got the Spindle Mount that bolts to the X Linear Axis done.
Hopefully by the end of the weekend, I'll have the the rest of the unit tidied up except for the actual
Drive units for each axis, which for some of them will be capstan drives rather than ballscrews\Acme threaded rods.

I've also started a CB file and have for the first ops been able to draw the shape of the 3mm O1 rod
and output Gcode that will make the necessary  Grind on the part, and as soon as the diamond cup wheel
arrives I'll continue on with this to see if I can get all of the operations done by drawing a shape in CB and
applying an engraving mop just like for the first mops.

I'm primarily making this roughing grinder to turn the item in pic1 into the item in pic2
but it will grind round stock into squares,hexagons ect and will be able to profile grindcams up to 50 mm
capacity which may to handy for those into model engine making and once I have it working
with the 3mm rod, I'll try a few cams to see how they come out.

Dave

[Bubba]

Nice work Dave. The drill spindle you are using will be used as work piece holding? Does it have taper for drill chuck? If so I would strongly suggest to go with different setup for this. It don't take long once come loose ( stock out of round, chatter, etc) and the grinding wheel explode. Good luck.   

[Dragonfly]

A bit off-topic: Dave, if my eyes do not lie to me there is some kind of attachment at the end of the calipers. What is it?

[Bubba]

If I'm not mistaken it's foot, so the calipers can be used as depth gauge.

[Dragonfly]

That's my presumption too but have not seen such before. Measuring depth with standard calipers (especially electronic) is not quite reliable.

[Bubba]

I guess it's all relative. I use calipers any time dimensions are not critical. When its critical, I have micrometers for that.

[dave benson]

HI Fly
Bubba's right, it's a foot so that you can measure depth of holes mainly, but I normally
use it on the shaper as it's only copy of the real thing, I tested it against my real Mitutoyo and the
outside measurement was good , however the Inside measurement was off by 0.12 mm
(it had a burr on the blades and the Depth measuring was so far off that I never used it for
measuring  Depths.
The foot (as it's index-able) has fixed this.
When doing my engineering ticket we as a class went to the Ford factory and visited the
meteorology rooms which was a real eye opener.
Our instructor who was a no nonsense man, called Vernier Calipers "Very Nears".
For work on the lathe I use mics and telescopic bore gauges.

Thanks for the input Bubba, I'm not going to use those grinding wheels presently on the grinder
but the one in the picture.
It's a Diamond cup wheel meant for a tool and cutter grinder.
When I was an apprentice, I used a PEP 610 rotary surface grinder for re-grinding  HSS knives.
I had a wheel explode, which cracked the 10 mm perspex safety cover and so am very weary of grinding
on the side of the wheel and because I had choice really, it was either do with what I had or not at all
I closed up the guard, normally the guard would cover about 240 degrees of the wheel leaving 120 Degrees of
the wheel exposed but I modified the guard by welding cheeks onto it so that only 20 degrees of the wheel
was exposed and did 500 of the blanks.
Still it was a chancy thing to do and I would not recommend to others to do so.

With the spindle, the chuck (1/2 capacity) is threaded on and I have bought a ER11 collet chuck
(just have to make an adapter) and all of the collets up 7 mm the drill rod I'm using is 3mm in Diameter.
I would like to try grinding a Cam as well and the machine has a capacity of 50 mm diameter but
I would like to be able to grab the shank of the cam blank and have the shank be at least 12 mm.
I know that with a 3 jaw chuck the repeatability will be rubbish but I hope to chuck up the blank
and finish it in one grind.

I just saw your laser engraving, Good Work.

Dave

[Bubba]

With the spindle, the chuck (1/2 capacity) is threaded on
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