Moondog,
I have made a CNC controller which is somewhat similar to the TurboCNC unit in that it runs in DOS. One program I made is a digitizing application. It is an "interactive" digitizer in that the operator first surveys the shape to be digitized, determines where a straight line starts and ends, where an arc or circle starts and ends, and marks these points.
He jogs the machine to a start position, (0, 0) and enters a keypress. Next the machine is jogged to the shape's start point where he enters a starting RS-274D command. He moves the machine to the next point (let's say it starts with a line), enters a keypress and the program generates "G1 XnnYmm". Assume the next portion is an arc; he jogs to a midpoint of the arc, enters a keypress, and proceeds to the end of the arc where another keypress records the arc data as "G2 Vnn Ymm Ipp Jqq" (where mm, nn, pp, qq are numbers). Thus digitizing generates the G Codes for the shape of interest. The operator can enter a specific M or G code after any gode generated.
I have digitized shapes with good success. While the program is not polished, it should be quite practical for what you want. What controller do you use for your machine? I would be interested in generating a digitized program if you had a sample. Let me know what you think!
Regards,
Jack C.  |