Messages

111

General Mach Discussion / Re: Automation Direct Photo switch

« on: April 22, 2008, 09:16:00 PM »

I used a Photo Eye like this on a project last year as a home switch  however, this is how we did it.  The unit we used was the 'reflector style.  We set up the photoeye and reflector at the home position, when the gantry broke the beam, the machine was homed.  From your description thus far, it's hard to tell how your switch is mounted.  Are you using a reflector.  A pic or a drawing would probably help expedite a solution.

Regards,
Sid

112

General Mach Discussion / Re: Turn on off without stopping

« on: April 22, 2008, 05:48:20 PM »

Hey Arturo,

That delay you are describing is called "Dwell" and it is adjusted in CONFIG--->PORTS AND PINS--->SPINDLE SETUP---> GENERAL PARAMETERS---> SPIN UP.    You can change the amount of delay to '0' to eliminate the delay.

HTH.

Regards,
Sid

113

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Shuttle Xpress Problem

« on: April 21, 2008, 03:32:07 PM »

Thank You!

114

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Shuttle Xpress Problem

« on: April 20, 2008, 11:01:04 PM »

Bump

115

General Mach Discussion / Re: problems with mach3, showing only partial programs/gcode

« on: April 20, 2008, 10:53:21 PM »

Are you runing a registered Copy of Mach?

Sid


Ooops, obviously Chip can type faster than me! 

116

Video P*r*o*b*i*n*g / Re: Post your Point Clouds Here!

« on: April 19, 2008, 04:43:48 PM »

Hey Tom,

The laser plane Y dimension and XZ dimension that the camera sees. You can use a ruler or graph paper in place of the laser plane and see that with the camera under normal lighting.

I dunno, I need to measure- I'll get back to you on this ok?

Is your laser collimating lens adjustable? If so, have you adjusted the lens so that the laser is skinniest near the center of the scanning range? Can you estimate the thin dimension of your laser line near the center of your target range?

Yes, Yes & I'd say approx 1mm.

What happens if the shop lights are on? Can you show something scanned with shop lights off and again with shop lights on, just to see if the shop lights are problematic?

OK, I will try this next week

A ping pong ball is spherical with a nice surface. A tennis ball or baseball would show well but these have irregularities in the surface. Still, they should appear circular from any direction.

Anyone know where to buy ping pong balls? 

Sid

P.S.  I hope others will post some point clouds too!

117

Video P*r*o*b*i*n*g / Re: Post your Point Clouds Here!

« on: April 19, 2008, 11:59:17 AM »

Hey Tom,

Getting right to the heart of the matter eh?   

This looks like a great data set. Also appears properly proportioned. Scanned hands that have been shown in other threads have appeared to have extra long fingers. 

Awww Shucks but, I am but an instrument.   

Are the stray points from the blanket?

Yes there are.  But, I orginally was using my wood table as a background and it was worse- hence the darker blanket.  It helped reject the Zero plane points but I would like to find something better.  So far my best results have been to raise my subject about 1" above the zero plane and then set the Ignore setting to .75".  Works pretty good.  That's how the Ark was done.  The Frame was directly on the Blanket.

Can you show a photo of your camera and laser setup?

Sure, but probably not till Monday

What camera and laser are you using?

OOOOOOOOOh that's classified Area 51 security clearance stuff  ... Camera = Gigaware available at a Radioshack near you- I think I paid $19.95.  It runs under the Logitect Driver so it's probably a knock-off.  $4.00 Laser came from the Ebay listing someone posted on another thread in this forum- probably made by illegal, shoe-less child labor 

What is the useful camera field of view and how far is the target from the camera and from the laser?

OK, the height is easy for me to answer- around 10" (depending upon if you mean how high above the Zero Plane Vertically OR if you mean taking into account the angle of the camera and projecting a straight line from the lens to the Zero point of the laser.  10" is the diagonal dimension.  I guess this is an Isoceles triangle geometry calculation?

I'm not sure what you mean by "USEFUL" FOV?  I know what my setting is but, I don't think that's what you mean.  How do I figure this out- sorry if this is a lame question.

What is the laser diameter in the working area?

Uh, another Techie question that I'm not sure what you mean.  The laser is projecting a line on my table about 6" long.  So I guess that would be a 12" Diameter- although I'm not sure why this is important to know.

Did you take this data with the house lights on?

Unless my cat turned on the lights at my home they were off.     The lights at my shop were I did the scanning were also off (sorry I just couldn't resist) 

Try scanning a sphere and see if the cloud appears circular viewed from any direction.

OK, I'll try it next week some time and let you know.

Regards,
Sid

118

Video P*r*o*b*i*n*g / Post your Point Clouds Here!

« on: April 19, 2008, 02:39:23 AM »

Though I would start a new thread just for Clouds.

Here are a couple of some of my latest results.  Both of these scans were done with both Y & X passes.  Stitiching/striping courtesy of MachCloud!  I wish I knew more about how to mesh accurately and/or add surfaces.  I can see a lot of detail in my clouds but it would really be nice to see an accurrate fully 'surfaced' rendering.  One must crawl before they walk.

Sid

119

Video P*r*o*b*i*n*g / Re: setting up cammera and laser

« on: April 18, 2008, 11:52:38 AM »

Hey Fellas,

Yesterday I tried to relocate my camera and laser per Tom's drawing.  I can't totally explain why but, I wasn't able to get any good results.  I understand the principle behind calibrating this way but, for some reason it just doesn't work with my setup.

Here are a couple of observations  when I mounted my camera as shown on the drawing it is upside down.  This results in the my calibration line for my cube showing up lower rather than higher as the table (Zero).  Now, that I am sitting here typing this I am wondering if I could have used a - (neg) value in the cube size setting box?  But that's not what I did    Instead I used a setting in the camera driver to 'flip' the image so it appeared correctly on the screen.

While this fixed the problem with my Y axis, it didin't invert my X axis.  So, when doing a single pass scan in the Y, I did get a cloud that looked OK.   But I have been expanding my horizons as of late and have started to scan objects as long as 6 Feet using the X scan/step.   When I did scans that required multiple passes in the X, the cloud was 'confused' and the stripes could not be aligned.

BTW- here's a little 'Gem' of info... I discovered that Rhino is able to open striped clouds and AUTOMATICALLY align the striped segments almost perfectly.

I have also noticed that there are definite "Sweet Spots" in camera & laser positioning.  At this point I have tried around 10 different positions/configurations and seem to always come back to a certain range where things look good.  I suspect this just has to do with the way this Plug in was written in terms of the calibration on the cube process and the angle/height calculation.

No matter!  I have been getting some REALLY super results.  I don't have time right now to post any pix (I have to go out and try and make some $$$ today to support my CNC "habit"  ) but, I will try later. 

IMHO,  even though the plugin is not 'perfected',  it is really pretty damn good at doing what it supposed to do.  I do have a list of things I have noticed that are 'funky'  but so far, I have been able to find ways to work around most of the issues.  Hopefully others will see this also when they start generating clouds.

I would like to see just a tad more functionality added to this plugin.  I don't know if this is possible but it would be great if you could control the STEP in scan quadrants (like one has the ability to control the Feed Rate at different lines of G-Code).  I've noticed that fo some of the things I scan some areas require a 1mm step to get good resolution and other areas can get away with 10mm because there is not a lot of detail there.  Currently one can not do this so you would have to use the 1mm step for the whole scan.  This results in a HUGE point cloud file which is a little unwieldy.  I suppose if someone was good with RHino, you could peice multiple scans together to accomplish this but, this takes more time.

Gotta run now- I'll try and post some pix later.

Sid





 

120

Video P*r*o*b*i*n*g / Re: Photos of webcam scanner. ( no laughing.. :) )

« on: April 16, 2008, 10:03:30 PM »

Tom,

Your drawings look GREAT!  All those conversion steps paid off.  I'm R/G B-Blind as well and can see very clearly what you are talking about!  The .GIF has better color though!   It's not the way I have mine setup now so I think I will give your idea a try and see what happens.  Stay Tuned...

Thanks,
Sid