Re: Probing

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

On Tuesday 15 January 2002 11:53 pm, Dean wrote:

> > Does EMC include a provision for surface mapping?
>
> This is what we are presently discussing.  At this point EMC supports a
> single probe move.  We would like to automate it so as to cover regions and
> to collect the probe data (aka "point cloud" ) and to store it within a
> generic file format so as to allow post processing utilities to operate on
> this data, like your bilinear interpolater.
>
> We believe initial coding will be easy.  The tough part is defining the
> file format and a probing strategy that it is generic for all n-axis
> machines.
>
> The external programming interface to EMC is through tcl/tk interpreter
> extensions.   Using this scripting language one can use commands to
> execute what would otherwise require g-code, including the probe command.
>
> It should also be possible to call the tcl/tk EMC extensions directly from
> "C" using the mktclapp tool  http://www.hwaci.com/sw/mktclapp/.
>
> I am hoping that Ray could contribute to the tk gui "probe setup" and I
> could write the probing stuff in "C".    If for some reason mktclapp does
> not work then the whole thing will be in tcl/tk. I am going to do some
> initial code testing on Friday.  I am going to take the existing "single
> shot" probe script and see if I can spawn a "C' program to perform some EMC
> commands
> on my mill.

Ray can and will!  Been out for a few days working on a wonderful bridgeport 
that was converted by Matt Shaver and will get back into the swing soon.

I know nothing of the mtkclapp program so enlighten me with links and your 
thinking of how it would help us do this.  Tcl itself can spawn a c program, 
send it values, and wait for a return set of values easily enough.  However, 
if we can create a link from your c code into NML we can directly talk from 
your program to the running EMC.  This would eliminate the need for tcl to 
run at all.  

Ray