Solved GADJ - Tool for Engraving Uneven Surfaces

[jblakey]

Hi Guys,

I've been hanging out over on the Zen Toolworks forum (got a 12x7), and I ended up having to write some Perl code to combine gridprobe results with an image I was trying to v-cut engrave to get things to work well. Thought I'd share it out, in case anyone needs it.

The theory is:

1. Using a touch probe and gridprobe.ngc (in EMC2), record probe results for the area of the work piece you'll be engraving. Using a z-axis touch off at the coords that you'll be starting the real job from. Record the start coordinates of the probe run.
2. Take those probe results, as well as the coords for the probe start and job start, and the g-code for what you want to engrave, and feed 'em into GADJ.pl (a perl script with configuration options at the top). GADJ should spit out a modified g-code that takes into consideration the surface variations of your work piece.
3. Go to your job start coordinates, zero everything, and run the new gcode.


There's a bit of a more detailed procedure in the zip file. Let me know if you have any comments/patches/additions to add in, i've tried to make the code very easy to add to or modify.

I figure this tool should be handy for more than what I am currently using it for, which is engraving an aluminum sword blade. It should work fine for PCB milling as well, or wood, or whatever.

Note: Version 1 has no support for modifying arcs. I do not know how to do this yet.

Note2: Check the output from GADJ! Use at own risk! It's working fine for me, but I'm lucky - you might not be

Thanks,
jason