Messages

681

GearoticMotion Preliminary testing / Re: Gearotica testing

« on: July 28, 2010, 12:11:41 PM »

Hi:

 Holding down ctrl and moviong mouse pans, Shift-mouse letys you zoom, and middle mouse button allows rotation about arbitrary axis..

Thx
Art

682

GearoticMotion Preliminary testing / Re: Gearotica testing

« on: July 28, 2010, 12:02:26 PM »

Chris:

 New Project button is top left, second icon.

Art

683

GearoticMotion Preliminary testing / Gearotica testing

« on: July 28, 2010, 10:21:28 AM »

Hi Guys:

NOTE: [ Test ended. Thanks to the 20 people who downloaded, please post your experiences. ]

   Gearotic motion could use a few testers to play with it for a few days. Id like to know if the program exhibits technical difficulties on various cpu types.

Some things work, some dont.  . The program can save projects you make, and if you send me the project file I can send you dxf ( 3d and 2d) of your
projects as a reward for testing this for me. This test will likely last only a little while so I can see if there are size/openGL issues and such.

If you do something you like, and woudl lilke to actually cut it, just send me a project file you save and Ill make the outputs for you, the output section is not yet
in the program and is a separate utility at the moment.

Here is a (bad) description to get started...


To use:
 
 Youll be presented with the main screen. Hit the "Involute" button or select the Involute tab. Youll see two gears on the screen.
Hit the "Add Master to Project" button. Press OK on the resultant dialog without changing anything.The screen will flick to the project screen and about 2 seconds later a gear will appear. This is the master driving gear. Now select the involute page again. Select again the "Add Master to Project".
In the resulting dialog, check the "4-bar linkage" checkbox. The screen will flick to the project screen again and the Master will be lit up in blue. Click it with the mouse and your new gear will rotate around the master till you click again. Then, moving the mouse will move the linkage around. Click when your happy
with position. The gear is now set and linked.  Press Simulate to run it. Using the mouse with ctrl or shift key pressed will zoom and pan.
 
   In general, when placing a gear, you can click a screen gear to select the one you intend to place to, OR select a gear from the project list by hovering over it when in placement mode. Clicking on a gear will select it as the gear your going to mesh to. Once clicked on the selecting gear, it will either place it,
OR a message will appear in the top coordinate line to explain why it wont.
 
  Some notes. ...
 
  To use 4-bar linkage the gear you link to must be smaller or equal to be linked. You can link to a larger gear, but if you do you should ensure that gear does not rotate 360 degrees as the master does. If you violate the rules like making a link gear turn too much thus being in violation of the rules
of 4-bar linkages, the gear will blank out when rotating beyond its capability. If this happens, delete the gear and replace it with a larger one.
 
To delete a gear, right click it in the Project tree and select "Delete train..", this will delete any gear and all gears attached directly to it.
 
To Turn a gear.. ( Like rotating a gear on a shaft with a setscrew), select a gear on a shaft by clicking it from the project list. Then use the CCW and CW
buttons to change its primary orientation on the shaft. This is usually only desired with ellipticals on a shaft with a linkage gear to set the "sweet spot" of rotation for the elliptical. ( Youll get what I mean as you play.. ) , thi sis th eonly way to rotate an individual gear in a larger train of gears.
 
   Some gear types do not yet do output, or place on the project screen. ( Planetary configurations do not yet work for example. )
 
  Save or load project with the buttons on the upper left screen. A test project is included so feel free to start by simply loading that project. There is
not yet a progress bar so be patient while large projects load.
 



Thanks, Enjoy and PLEASE post your comments..

Art

684

LazyTurn / Re: DXF opening error: 0

« on: July 26, 2010, 06:46:46 PM »

Hi Ross:

 In general an "ArtCode" is simply an indication to me where in the porogram an error occured. A 0 doesnt mean much. Its a divide by zero, question is where..

  Did you delete your lazyturn.xml as a test? If it still occurs after that Id recommend updating your video drivers as its usually an OpenGL error in a video driver that can cause that, ( or at least thats when Ive seen it occur..).

 
Art

685

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: July 25, 2010, 09:34:50 PM »

Hi Guys:

1.LT will not convert units on import?
 
   Nope, but Ill consider that for next development cycle. At the moment its basically asking if the input is metric or standard. Many DXF's dont say
in any regard.

2.In tools you need to check the box that the defined tool is metric.
   Don't just copy an Imperial  defined  tool , check that's it is metric, since LT will not do the conversions for the newly created tool.
   You can use metric or imperial defined tools.

 Yup.

3. The tool used defines the generated gcode units.
     If an Imperial  unit drawing is used and metric tool used then the gcode units will be MM. Note that the units are posted as a comment
        "       MM                            "                 Imperial      "                                  inches.
   User should  use consistant units for the drawing and tools?

>> Not sure about that at all. If you use a standard tool in metric mode, I suspect it simply codes the tool as .25mm or soemthing.. Ill list that for a fix as
well.


   
Art

686

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: July 24, 2010, 02:05:05 PM »

Sounds like the IJ setting in config/general or the "reverse arcs in Turn" is selected.

Art

687

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: July 22, 2010, 11:56:18 AM »

Dennis:

  In theory if "1" is the offset , then your finish pass should only leave 1.0 , so 2mm should be the oversize. What does the GCode indicate the position is when cutting the final pass of the finished measurement point?

Art

688

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn (OT)

« on: June 04, 2010, 11:21:14 AM »

Hi Rich: 

>>Can you eleaborate some on it?

  It has nothing to do with Lathes or Mills directly..  While building a clock recently I was amazed how hard it was to design a gear and check meshing requirements and such. I purchased a program to allow me to do so, but it was a bit buggy. They wanted an upgrade fee to get the bug fixes.. ( which always pisses me off.. :-) ). Later I was looking at making some elliptical gear mechanisms.. I was really surprised to see the price and problems involved with elliptical gears and such..
  I decided to write my own gearing program, from individual gears to full mechanisms built from many gears. Square gears, triangular gears, involute, cycloidal, pin gears, escapements..  Its been dominating my time lately, but is fun to play with and should allow woodworkers, hobbiests etc to make good gears easily and inexpensively. Simulate their designs and make video's of proposed mechanisms running. The "Gearotic Motion" project has been underway for a few months just to see if I could do something pleasing and easy to use. Its looking very cool right now and I suspect it may be usefull for anyone wanting to do geared mechanisms at the hobby level without very expensive software..  I'll have it put out GCode, Print-to-scale and 3d models for 3d printers as well.
 
   I suspect youll see some sort of announcement of "Gearotic Motion" as a released standalone cad program sometime this year. It's unlikely to get a large following due to there really being no market I suspect, but I see a need for such a program and decided to fill it. ( or attempt to anyway. :-) ). At its worst it looks like it will be a great rube-goldberg machine creator.. . Usually you get gears only from expensive cad... this one will make easy gears without all the complexity required by big business.

Art

689

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: June 04, 2010, 08:18:20 AM »

Hi:


   Happy you found the program, theres been thousands of hits on the thread, htough I think only a few hundred have downloaded the program itself. There will be more work done in the fall as Deep winter is usually my development time on the hobby/research side.
   Rich and the others here have offered great support to those that use the program and though its not yet done, it does offer more than most lathe programs in terms of its output. As a free program, ( which will remain free ) its worked on when I find I have some time to donate to its cause. Usually thats in november to February timeframe.

  Ill be releaseing a new cad type program this year commercially ( hopefully in a couple months time ) that should be finished its time critical stuff by November when I can then switch back to LTurn to finalize its finish passes. It only needs one more push I think to take it to the point it was meant to go to, which isnt far from current capability.

Have fun, report any annoyances and when development starts again I usually run them away first..

Thanks
Art

690

LazyTurn / Re: LazyTurn

« on: April 20, 2010, 09:10:35 AM »

Hi Rich:

  LOL, pretty good.

  Its not seomthing that popped up recently, Ive struggled with the inside/outside thing for a while, I just
have it set to check as much as I could to make the decision on inside/outside and it works most of the time,
drawings like this one fool it is all..

Art