NEW!! Drill Wizard

[Ron Ginger]

I have developed a new Drill wizard and added it to the Newfangled Suite.

This wizard is useful for one-off drilling jobs, like doing a base casting for a model engine. You have 2 sets of DROs, one for an absolute postion the other for and incremental move. A third set specifies the drill rapid height, depth, plunge rate and peck increment.

If you want to drill a series of holes you first setup the drill parameters. Then if you have an absolute location you fill in the DROs and click the DoIt button. The move occurs. Then you click the Plunge or Peck button and the drill cycle occurs. Next you could move to another absolute position, or move an increment. If you were going to drill a series of holes all spaced the same distance you could do the whole job by alternately clicking the Inc and Plunge button.

The wizard also has the ability to record a file, so you can both do the immediate job and build a Gcode file to re-use. When you click the Start Record button you are prompted for a file name.

The record function will look for a file named GcodeStart.tap and GcodeEnd.tap, which it will inert into the gcode file it builds.

There is a You tube video showing the operation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzzoybS-QPQ

the code is attached to this file. Just download it, unzip it into the MAch3\Addons folder and you re ready to go.

If you have a Newfangled license you are unlimited, if not it runs in demo mode and gives you a few moves.

Hope you find this useful

Edit, Dec 11
New version, fixes DROs to accept negative numbers
V1.02 added F word for Peck drill

[RICH]

Ron,
Just did the download. The wizard screen is activated but all else is not working.
Getting this  error________ Scriptor Compile Error.in:

RICH

[Ron Ginger]

I use some of the VB  stuff, like #expand, that was added for the mach std mill screens. I dont recall the first version that worked in, but it was about a year ago.

[DaveCVI]

Hi Ron,
The #Expand and other stuff was all introduced in the mach 3.43.xx series (they're not in the 3.42.xx series).
So the current lock down (3.43.22) would be the oldest and also currently available version with those interfaces.

Dave

[RICH]

Ok, so need to upgrade as i am using Version 3.042.033
RICH

[DaveCVI]

Rich,
Looks that way...

There is a call "GetMachVersion" that returns the mach version - the wizards could call it when started and then and tell you that the mach version is too old for the wizard - but that does not work for all cases - the problem is that the GetMachVersion call was added in 3.42.30 - so it's of use since then... but if you try to call it on a version < 3.42.30, mach gives the script a fault before the script gets the version info - so you get stuck in a catch 22 situation.

Dave

[fusion]

Ron, I can't get any of the DRO's to accept a negative number. For example, when I install the wizard, the default depth is -.500.  I ran that, and it works, but if I enter any other number into the depth or incremental movement DRO's, it only take the number not the negative sign, and therefore will not drill below Z 0.

Thanks!
Mike

[Ron Ginger]

Ok, that one hit me with the Turn wizards- i didnt know you could make DROs positive only, and somehow I clicked that on in the screen designer. Ill have to go through the Drill wiz and fix any I find.

Thanks for the note, Ill have a fix up in a few days.

[Ron Ginger]

I have fixed the problem of negative number in DROs. The fixed version is in the top reply to this topic. 

Unzip this into Addons, then change the folder name to eliminate the 101 at the end of the file name

[fusion]

Ron,
Thanks!  I tried it out and you fixed the negative number issue, but I found another problem.  It doesn't seem to read the feed rate DRO.  I tried several different values, and the result is the same.  I discovered this by driving a #7 drill 80 ipm into an aluminum part.  The stepper motor lost that battle.  If I set the feed rate in the MDI and then launch your wizard it work at whatever feed rate I set in the MDI.
I also tried saving the program into a G code file, and I couldn't find any feed rate reference.

Thanks for all your work on this!  I really do like the wizard.
Mike