Re: Modifying EMC interface for lathe (x and z) display

[Jon Elson <elson-at-pico-systems.com>]

Howard Bailey wrote:

>I was wondering how one would modify TKEMC to only display the readouts for
>the X and Z axes for a lathe.  I have looked at some of the files and what I
>needed was not apparent to me.  Additionally, I was wondering how difficult
>it would be to have one version of EMC set up to run a mill and another to
>run a lathe on the same computer to be able to choose the proper version for
>the job at hand.
>
This is very easy.  Assuming that only user interface changes and 
encoder/stepper resolution changes
and such were needed, you could do this with 2 different .run files 
which call up 2 different
.ini files.  These .ini files would specify the parameters for the 
motion, and also specify which
tk/tcl file for the user interface should be used.

>  More specifically, which files I would need two versions
>of and which references to these files in the .ini files I would need to
>modify.  Any help is appreciated.
>  
>
The .run file has the name of the .ini file close to the top. 
 Otherwise, all the parameters that are
generally considered to be user configurable are in the .ini file.

As for screen display, setting of the axis names looks like this in the file
.../emc/src/emctask/tkemc.tcl  :

set poslabel0 X
set poslabel1 Y
set poslabel2 Z

As for the number of axes, that is in the .ini file, in the [TRAJ] 
section, AXES = 2, in your case.

The remaining problems are to get the interpreter to accept Z and X 
words as if they were
really coming in as X and Y, and to get spindle encoder => threading 
operations working.
The first sounds like a trivial hack for somebody who knows the 
interpreter a bit.  The
second is a major job, but not impossible for someone who knows the 
internals of EMC.
There are people working on this right now, I believe.

Jon