#avr Logs

Nov 16 2018

12:06 AM rue_mohr: :)
12:10 AM rue_mohr: http://paste.debian.net/1051939/
12:10 AM rue_mohr: everyone come up with a knock based something
12:20 AM jesseg: rue_mohr, fact is I'm actually not into avr cpus either. I'm a PIC crazy. but a friend gave me an old Cricut home artsie fartsie stencil cutter, and so I wrote new firmware for it so it accepts gcodes via its USB serial port and now I use it to cut stencils for putting on solder paste
12:21 AM rue_mohr: what do you make the stencils from?
12:22 AM polprog: hey, thats a cool program
12:24 AM rue_mohr: yea, I wish MY cam were that far along...
12:28 AM rue_mohr: jesseg, when did you start that anyhow?
12:28 AM rue_mohr: hmm, maybe I should just put a menu in, I'm gonna need it anyhow
12:34 AM jesseg: rue_mohr, I use 4 mill overhead projector transparency sheets to make the stencils with
12:34 AM rue_mohr: oh yea! cool
12:34 AM jesseg: and I don't remember when I first started but it was a month or two ago
12:35 AM rue_mohr: I was thinking paper
12:35 AM jesseg: nah I got a 50 sheet package of the plastic for like $5 delivered from amazon or ebay
12:35 AM jesseg: it works great
12:35 AM rue_mohr: yea
12:35 AM rue_mohr: hmmm
12:36 AM rue_mohr: do they use a dc motor to conrol the cut pressure??
12:36 AM jesseg: they use a nearly linear voice coil motor (i.e. like a speaker coil sort of) to set the cut pressure
12:37 AM rue_mohr: hmmm
12:37 AM jesseg: anyway the Cricut stencil cutter has an atmega128 or something in it so I had to venture into the land of compounding bitwise programming LOL
12:37 AM rue_mohr: and does it have z axis control on the blade?
12:38 AM jesseg: yes, see here: https://www.amazon.com/Cricut-Deep-Cut-Blade-Housing/dp/B001HL2Q8A
12:38 AM jesseg: you turn the knob and it adjusts how far the blade sticks out the bottom
12:38 AM rue_mohr: no I mean rotation
12:38 AM jesseg: and that blue metal part slides pressed against the target so the depth cut is set by the knob
12:39 AM jesseg: oh, no the blade just has an off center point and spins in tiny ball bearings
12:39 AM jesseg: so it's just a drag knife
12:39 AM rue_mohr: ok, how do they init its position
12:39 AM rue_mohr: touch-off
12:39 AM rue_mohr: ?
12:40 AM jesseg: so yeah small details are a little distorted because of the radius of the drag knife's turn arc but for solder paste it just doesn't matter :P
12:40 AM rue_mohr: lead-in?
12:40 AM jesseg: I'm not sure I understand your question.
12:40 AM jesseg: There's a home switch on the 6" axis
12:40 AM rue_mohr: well, when tehy start the knife might be in any roatational position
12:40 AM jesseg: oh correct.
12:40 AM rue_mohr: so...
12:40 AM jesseg: it starts wherever it starts.
12:40 AM rue_mohr: :-S
12:40 AM jesseg: I mean I could make code to do a light drag to set the starting angle
12:41 AM rue_mohr: how much Z range does the knife do, ~1mm?
12:41 AM jesseg: and I did experiment with algorithms to cut sharp corners by cutting past and then coming back
12:44 AM jesseg: but in the end i just kept it simple because I was short on time and rounded corners work fine with solder paste since it reflows
12:44 AM rue_mohr: ccokie dough
12:44 AM jesseg: z travel is about 5mm
12:44 AM rue_mohr: on the voice coil!
12:44 AM jesseg: yes
12:44 AM rue_mohr: wow
12:44 AM jesseg: rue_mohr, here's pictures of the machine, and a stencil I made with it and a board I stuffed with the stencil: http://videoflier.com/files/DIY_PCB_Stencils/
12:45 AM rue_mohr: :) those ARE pretty round
12:45 AM rue_mohr: did the origional controller do any better?
12:45 AM jesseg: I have no idea. It was made for cutting out 6 inch high letters from colored paper for kids parties.
12:46 AM jesseg: they were all large and didn't have any fine detail so I have no idea
12:46 AM rue_mohr: huh
12:46 AM rue_mohr: its funny, the distortion is almost completely rotational in nature
12:46 AM jesseg: yup
12:47 AM rue_mohr: cool
12:47 AM jesseg: you also gotta remember it's using stepper motors so they have a certain springyness due to the magnetic poles, and then it's got a rubber belt in the one axis too
12:48 AM jesseg: it's definitely not close to ideal... But it's cheap and quick lol, and it sure makes it easier to make PCBs
12:48 AM rue_mohr: how long did you consider something new that was laser based
12:48 AM jesseg: I'm not sure I understand the question.
12:48 AM jesseg: But I definitely considered putting a cutting laser in place of the voice coil
12:48 AM rue_mohr: you didn't think about making soemthing laser based to redo the whole thing?
12:49 AM rue_mohr: mhm
12:49 AM jesseg: oh of course I thought about it
12:49 AM rue_mohr: see, I thoguth about making a gui too
12:49 AM jesseg: but... I was short on time, and this works, so I figured I'd just use it as is for now
12:49 AM rue_mohr: I think some of my get-up-and-go got-up-and-left
12:49 AM jesseg: then try to find a good light weight powerful laser I could put in there
12:49 AM rue_mohr: yea, I'm not sure on wattage
12:50 AM rue_mohr: people do insane tings with cd writer lasers
12:50 AM jesseg: because with a laser there wouldn't be any loading on the steppers so no distortion there, and no radius of the drag knife so nice clean corners
12:51 AM jesseg: alternatively I could just put a mirror on the carriage and have any size of laser I wanted off to the side of the machine -- like they do real laser cutters
12:51 AM rue_mohr: :)
12:51 AM rue_mohr: the main question is, what laser and what budget
12:52 AM jesseg: and of course one must also ask why not just get one of these : https://www.ebay.com/itm/Upgraded-40W-CO2-Laser-Engraver-Cutting-Machine-Crafts-Cutter-USB-Interface-New/253028405426?epid=17017370466
12:53 AM rue_mohr: hmm $360 eh?
12:53 AM jesseg: Frankly the cpu in this Cricut isn't fast enough for me. It chokes out generating arcs since sin() is so slow
12:54 AM rue_mohr: whaaat
12:54 AM rue_mohr: lookup table dude
12:54 AM rue_mohr: bingrees
12:54 AM jesseg: I tried a lookup table, it had missing codes, so then it becomes a lookup table with interpolation otherwise I get missing steps and stepper motors are not happy
12:54 AM rue_mohr: (1/256 of a rev)
12:54 AM rue_mohr: awe dude
12:55 AM rue_mohr: I can help you there
12:55 AM jesseg: how so?
12:55 AM rue_mohr: I ahve all that stuff, (iirc)
12:56 AM jesseg: well, it doesn't really matter anymore, i just use straight lines when cutting my stencils anyway
12:56 AM jesseg: and I get a perfectly usable product
12:56 AM rue_mohr: oooh, damnit
12:57 AM rue_mohr: its $300 w/$300 shipping
12:57 AM jesseg: oh what country are you in?
12:57 AM rue_mohr: canada
12:57 AM jesseg: oh wow OK. says free shipping to USA
12:57 AM rue_mohr: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/VEVOR-Factory-40W-Laser-Cutter-CO2-Laser-Engraving-Machine-Laser-Engraver-for-Arts-and-Crafts-with/32862492061.html
12:57 AM jesseg: oh not that one :P the ebay one had free shipping to USA
12:58 AM rue_mohr: no
12:58 AM rue_mohr: ebay sellers wont chip to canada
12:58 AM rue_mohr: and ebay has all sorts of system problems
12:58 AM rue_mohr: that they tell you to use paypal to deal with
12:58 AM jesseg: ahh gotcha
12:58 AM rue_mohr: even if its not buyer or seller realted
01:00 AM rue_mohr: Id like to laser cut tinfoil
01:00 AM rue_mohr: I dont know what power is needed
01:01 AM jesseg: anyway I'm tempted to make a new control board for this Cricut that has a nice 32 bit PIC running at 218Mhz with 16x microstepping drivers or whatnot. Then I'd have the horsepower to generate perfect sin/cos arcs in realtime and so on and so forth :P
01:02 AM rue_mohr: there are other ways to make a small processor do a circle fast, but yea
01:04 AM jesseg: yeah but it's not a true circle or it's not in real time, right?
01:04 AM rue_mohr: realtime yes
01:04 AM rue_mohr: pretty sure its a true circle
01:04 AM jesseg: well I'd be delighted to know how :D
01:04 AM rue_mohr: I'v not looked at how that optimization works
01:05 AM polprog: i need to get a pickit
01:05 AM rue_mohr: hmmmmm
01:06 AM rue_mohr: maybe I can tweak the nedit file open dialog into what I want
01:06 AM rue_mohr: I'm going to bed
01:06 AM jesseg: me too
01:06 AM jesseg: good night everyon
01:06 AM jesseg: e
01:08 AM rue_bed2: ok, and yea
01:09 AM rue_bed2: same problem as last night, this other CODE is just sitting here
01:09 AM rue_bed2: to put me to sleep
01:09 AM rue_bed2: but, I need a file dialog box
01:09 AM rue_bed2: thats not fair
01:14 AM polprog: shh
01:14 AM polprog: sleep now
01:23 AM rue_bed2: http://www.vaxination.ca/motif/XmFileSeleA_3X.html
01:23 AM rue_bed2: huh
01:23 AM rue_bed2: they said motif didn't have it
02:45 AM polprog: motif
02:46 AM polprog: plz
02:46 AM polprog: use tk at least
02:46 AM polprog: the 90s called, they want their unix system back
03:22 AM thardin: you didn't warn them about bush and september 11th?
03:31 AM Thrashbarg: you'd be bumped off pretty quick if you did :P
03:35 AM thardin: "who was on the other end?" "some loon"
03:48 AM polprog: lol
03:48 AM polprog: bush did 7/11
03:50 AM thardin: pepsi can't melt steel beams
03:52 AM skz81: <polprog> bush did 7/11 >> what happend, July the 11th ?
03:53 AM polprog: no, the shop
03:53 AM polprog: https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/6-eleven-7-eleven-8-eleven-9-eleven-george-bush-wtc-terrorist-attacks-meme.jpg
03:54 AM polprog: christ this filename
03:54 AM polprog: ugh
03:54 AM skz81: haha ok
03:55 AM skz81: <polprog> christ this filename >> At least, it's descriptive, you can't say the opposite
03:56 AM thardin: nice meme
03:57 AM Thrashbarg: ...yes
03:57 AM polprog: skz81: yeah, it is :p
04:15 AM nabil__ is now known as nabil
08:29 AM [1]MrMobius is now known as MrMobius
08:59 AM rue_mohr: polprog, actaully, for C motif is like the only thing that works
09:00 AM polprog: hmm
09:00 AM polprog: i tried GTK in C[++] but i like my hair so i just made a small button example
09:00 AM polprog: and i dont remember if it even worked
09:02 AM rue_mohr: thats whats halaroius, all the motif stuff works
09:03 AM rue_mohr: if you take any random QT example from the internet, it wont work
09:03 AM rue_mohr: if you take any random motif example from the internet, you will have two issues, main isn't int, and you have to add stdio.h
09:03 AM rue_mohr: otherwise, they all work
09:06 AM polprog: QT is off my list, im not sure if it can be even SANELY written without their editor
09:07 AM polprog: gtk was pretty nice
09:07 AM * polprog only did real gui programming in Swing and AWT, oh the blessed java days
09:09 AM rue_mohr: awt isn't athena is it?
09:10 AM polprog: abstract window toolkit
09:10 AM polprog: it has a very characteristical theme unless you change it
09:11 AM polprog: Solaris installer is writtien in it for example (or swing - i'd always mix, java.awt would give you basic stuff and javax.swing more complicated controls)
09:12 AM rue_mohr: I found a file open dialog in motif, I'm actually impressed
09:12 AM rue_mohr: I mean, its horrid, but its there
09:12 AM rue_mohr: and that seems to be the motif theme
09:13 AM polprog: nice. is it the 3-pane one?
09:14 AM rue_mohr: https://v8doc.sas.com/sashtml/vms/znv-open.htm
09:14 AM rue_mohr: no wait
09:14 AM rue_mohr: thats not actaully it
09:15 AM rue_mohr: https://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/java/awt/figs/jawt0610.gif
09:15 AM rue_mohr: bottom right
09:15 AM polprog: nice
09:15 AM rue_mohr: I was ABOUT to build one, but my goal is the program, not building a gui
09:15 AM polprog: motif is pretty cute
09:16 AM polprog: the only motif app ive really used was xsane and ponyprog gui
09:19 AM rue_mohr: its cute, motif was done right around the edge of gui apps, so, its all built like you didn't ahve a gui to do it
09:19 AM rue_mohr: all punchcard code (80 column)
09:19 AM skz81: <polprog> motif is pretty cute >> s/cute/Qt/
09:21 AM skz81: polprog, what about WxWidgets ?? Last time we discussed GUI one guy was pushing it...
09:22 AM rue_mohr: couldn't get it to go
09:22 AM rue_mohr: dont remember why
09:22 AM polprog: yesterday i was looking at adding guis to perl/python scripts
09:23 AM rue_mohr: I was shooting for tk, but that doesn't work, you need to embed their engine
09:23 AM polprog: but apart from reading about tk in python i didnt do much
09:23 AM polprog: it was pretty late night and i didnt feel like programming at all
09:23 AM rue_mohr: polprog, gui in python, iirc I used tkinter
09:23 AM polprog: yeah, tkinter
09:23 AM rue_mohr: wanna see my nc spooler?
09:23 AM polprog: sure
09:23 AM rue_mohr: as a src ref
09:27 AM rue_mohr: http://ruemohr.org/~ircjunk/programming/python/
09:28 AM rue_mohr: copy of it unpacked too
09:29 AM rue_mohr: the inheritance was nice
09:29 AM rue_mohr: went really well
09:39 AM polprog: whats an NC file?
09:39 AM polprog: yeah, python is nice
09:39 AM polprog: nicer than perl
09:39 AM polprog: :P
09:42 AM polprog: whats this program for in general
07:34 PM rue_mohr: it sends nc files to cnc machine
07:34 PM rue_mohr: s
07:40 PM rue_mohr: polprog, did you try it out?
07:45 PM rue_mohr: --
11:40 PM day__ is now known as day