Messages

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G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Controlling an Industrial Arm using MACH3

« on: January 02, 2011, 12:23:30 PM »

I thought about doing the jogging thing, so apparently that is the way to go. It sounds painful, but way less than placing the components by hand. Plus once it is coded, I can do an infinity of boards without added effort.

Now, I know how to jog X (Side arrows), Y (up/down arrows) and Z (Page Up/Down). What I have never figured out is how to jog the fourth axis A. I tried a bunch of keys, but none of them are responding. What could I be missing here? Thanks for the discussion!

2

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Controlling an Industrial Arm using MACH3

« on: January 02, 2011, 11:45:37 AM »

Hi there,

I was able to successfully drive this robotic arm using MACH3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR7CKAv3Wm4

My question now is that since this is not the typical linear X-Y system, but more of a radial one, what would be the easiest way to tackle this coordinate system? Can it be done?

What I have as an input is a text file with X-Y-Rotation coordinates for electric components. I want to generate G Code from this text file and have the robot pick passive components (resistors and caps) from reels and then place them on the board according to the X-Y-Rot coordinates from the files. Of course, there must be some kind of transformation here which I wonder if I need to make in the TXT-GCode generator or is there a place inside of MACH3 to generate this transformation if certain robot parameters are known?

Thanks for your input! Best regards,

JIQ