Re: Floppy-EMC? and some other questions

[Ray <rehenry-at-up.net>]

I've had a mad-dash set of honey-do's so I'm getting into this thread a
bit late.

On Mon, 04 Sep 2000, Brian wrote:
<snipped>
> :-)   no GUI no glory?
> 
> I like a graphic interface as much as the next guy but I dont see it as a
> major requirement on a CNC control
> and with the current EMC GUIs requiring 800x600 minimum screen
> resolution they rule out using the vga16 server and make the installation
> that much more dificult for Linux newbies

I see some merit in low res displays.  A lot of what is shown by something
like tkemc isn't used during any one machine operating sequence.  I don't
think that any of the existing emc gui's were written for shop floor kinds
of machine operation.  They were written to give NIST and other motion
research outfits access to the commonly used features of the EMC software
API. 

I wrote a 640x480 shop-floor gui for emc.  It had very few of the frills
available today.  Jan tried it out for me and reported that one of his
machinists was able to intuit a machine control and make parts in a very
few minutes.  All that's left of that project got directed into
tkbackplot.  But it proved to me that very specific function, mini, gui's
can be written and loaded as needed.  These kinds of projects would
allow the EMC to run a mill using limited computing power and still have
rather powerful displays.

At the same time, it is also obvious to me that next to a 10-15k dedicated
cnc control, a $500.00 no-name box -- with enough power to run freqmod,
tkio, tkemc, tkbackplot,  and IO_Show, while downloading your favorite
flavor of shop floor graphics -- makes today's control costs rather
low.  

<snipped>

> to attract new users the users have to be able to make it work in one day
> no matter what it looks like
> things are getting better but this is still a stumbling block for many M$
> users

Yes it would be nice to reduce the pain of getting over the EMC speed-bump
and at some point, folk will want to plug it in and fire it up.  And
during the 1.5 years that I've been playing with EMC, I've seen it come
a long way.  But this dream of getting a mitsubishi/mazak or comparable
CNC for the price of an unburned cd just reminds me a bit of
lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds. 

> a Palm seems very small for a control pendant
> my 2 cents sez
> "manual controls for 'big iron' are probably not something that should
> be miniaturized to this point"
> 
> what I had in mind was something closer to the full sized switches and
> buttons found on the older CNC control panels before they all went to
> membrane keypads
> and a good sized manual jog handweel with detents for that nice Clik feel
> leave the keyboard for typing but not for machine control

Yes! Yes!  I have no love for the ibm keyboard as a human machine
interface, unless you're typing in letters or numbers.  Some of us got
kinetic enough to get packman to eat all of those little things using the
direction keys and a z80 chip.  But that's about as much motion control
as I think those buttons are good for.  

When I have completed a machine repair, I always ask for the primary
operator to test out all of it's functions.  I'm fascinated by the way a
good operator is able to get around a control.  I honestly believe that
their operation of a machine tool is as much a memorized kinetic process as
is the work of your favorite olympic athlete.   Any good HMI for EMC will
need to have the same kind of feel.  And it isn't a palm pilot pendant.  A
pendant is a real tactile experience.  Something that the operator knows
and doesn't need to look at.  It's a set of buttons that you can press
while watching the machine move.

Now my thinking here does not prevent making a palm gui for the EMC.  I
think that such an animal would be awesome although I'd prefer putting it
on the palm lookalike that runs linux.  Wireless would be even better. 
Then it should have multiple windows, one for each of the machines in a
manufacturing cell.  With it you would have access to all of the
programming and running features of all of the machines  But it ain't a
pendant.

(SWMBO says rant mode off)

Ray