The Problem:
You have generated your gcode for a certain thickness of material. At run time you want to run the same program on several different material thicknesses or the material is not the thickness you thought (plywood for example). BTW: my gcode generator is not at the machine.
Suggestion:
Have a selection in gSender to modify the gcode at run time to change the max depth of cut.
Your gcode was generated for a certain material thickness. How can you change material thickness without generating new gcode? gSender doesnāt know anything about generating gcode - how can it possibly modify the gcode?
If you are talking about engraving something on the top of the material it is simply a matter of using the material top surface as your z=0 point and designing the gcode accordingly. Any material that is of the minimum thickness required could then be run with the same gcode. For example, if you are designing an engraving for 1/2" material, you can run the same code on any material 1/2" or thicker.
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Just for the fun of it. One could in- or decrease the Z-axis travel resolution according to the percentage the material thickness deviates from the programm.
It will impact everything in Z movement, though.
That is why Iām suggesting a selection in gSender to do the work. It has a gCode generator to do surfacing. A good programmer (which Iām sure Sienci Labs has) could take the gCode file and do a search and replace on the max z depth. There would be some issues with this approach but a good prorammer could over come these.
Without adding this suggestion, there are work arounds by manually changing the z zero point but it can be problematic. Letās say your z depth of cut is 0.75 in the gcode and your actual material is 0.72. You could zero the actual material surface the raise z by 0.03 and re-zero the z-axis. Now z starts 0.03 above the material and cuts to 0.75 depth which is the actual bottom of the material.
Hey Don,
To mitigate problems with material thickness, you could design your cut-throughs with a max marge in mind and zero botom of material as deafault.
The rest of the toolpaths zero on top material. It will take a bit longer on your cutouts if the material is below max, but it is a workaround that keeps you from running between your cad location and cam location.
I always design my cutouts with bottom z-zero so I donāt have to be accurate on material hight. It works.
gSender does not have a gcode generator. It has a basic macro for a tool path that does surfacing.
Spamming_Eddie,
Thanks for the tip, Iāll try it.
Jens, Iām sorry I donāt think that is correct. You can see the gCode that is generated by gSender. Change the x/y parameters and the gcode changes. If you change the length, line 14 will change.
Of course, what Iām suggesting would be a lot more complicated and take a lot of testing.
@d46ramsey Iām curious about this. To me, gSender does not generate gcode. It takes it and sends it to the controller. Are you talking about entering manual commands in console? If so, that makes sense, but those commands do not change any gcode file that is loaded.
Also, what is āline 14ā?
@gwilki ā¦ my point exactly. What @d46ramsey is suggesting is that since gSender has a macro built in to create a very basic tool path for surfacing, it means that it has a gcode generator that surely must be able to take an existing gcode file, parse it and modify it.
Itās about equivalent to saying āmy phone answering machine speaks to the calling party so with a minor modification it should be able to generate a novel such as āWar and Pieceā for meā.
Anyway, I am done with this subject.
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Gwilki,
You are correct, the program only sends the loaded program to the controller. That does not mean you canāt modify the program and then run it. What Iām suggesting is that the programmers, take the loaded program, modify it with a different thickness setting, write it to the loaded program in gSender and run (or allow you to run it) it. I see the limitations that may have to be implementated but it can be done.
Line 14: When you open the surfacing tool in gSender and put in your parameters for the surface and then press āGenerate g-codeā, the program generates g-code for those parameters. At the top of the surfacing tool window there is a selection for āG-code Viewerā. Press that and you will see the g-code that was generated. If you change the length for your surface and re-generate the code, line 14 will change to your new length.
@Jens I donāt mean to cut your legs out from under youl, Jens, but @d46ramsey is correct. gSender does generate gcode within the context of the surfacing module. I have never used it and tend to forget that. So, Don is correct, when you change a parameter in the surfacing module, the gcode that gSender generates changes. I still donāt know what line 14 is, but it doesnāt matter.
Within the context of gcode generated outside of that module, gSender cannot change it. I believe that I now understand - finally - that is what Don is suggesting as an enhancement.