I have a small, entirely manual surface grinder. It's a delightful thing to have, but a person can sure spend a lot of time standing there turning cranks. As a CNC kinda guy, this seems nuts.
So I mounted some steppers on the Y and Z axis, and a small servo on the X. I built a stand alone controller using a PIC microcontroller, a four line LCD and a bunch of pushbuttons to set the various parameters; y distance, y increment, z distance, z increment, x distance, x passes before y change and so on.
It works ok .. but barely. A whole lot more programming work will probably (maybe .. hopefully) get it working well.
I also have Mach3 installed on a couple of milling machines, and started thinking that it sure would be nice to use Mach3 to move things on my surface grinder, rather than my little PIC. (The motion portion is what needs the most work.)
So I started to think about writing a G code generator, treating the grinder like another milling machine. That would be better than what I have now, but still sub-optimal. For example, it would be nice add a "spark watcher", so that once the grinding is no longer making sparks, the program can go on to the next stripe or next height (depth).
That calls for programming, and it surely SEEMS as if Mach3 can do this.
But I'm not quite sure where to start! I'm fluent in a couple of languages and have certainly written some VB code over the years.
But I don't see how VB interfaces with Mach3.
Is there a good thread or site about just getting started?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
Alan