Web Drawing to LabVIEW

One of my suppliers familiar with my engraver project sent me this video of an Adpet robot with iPad interface. Of course I have been thinking about advancing my iPad machine control, so I got to work on creating a web based sketch pad that I could upload to LabVIEW. (These days I assume most of what I want to code has already been coded by a more talented community member.) After a quick search I came across this HTML5 canvas program. I got the canvas program running on my development server and then began hacking it to save the sketch to the server and store the location in the MySQL database. The 'Submit to Robot' button saves the image and stores its information in the database.

HTML5 Canvas Sketchpad

LabVIEW vi for iPad Style Page Swiping

In a fit of inspiration I received after watching my friend type with his xbox controller using xPadder, I decided to create an iPad style interface for my LabVIEW industrial HMI. In a normal industrial HMI setup there is a banner at the top of the page with information and a banner at the bottom for navigation. With this setup there is a limited number of buttons that can be used for navigation and so some pretty creative schemes get implemented.

iPhone Controller for Machine Automation

I have wanted to control my automation machines from my iPhone for a while, but have not had the time and tools in order to do it. This past week everything aligned and I was able to make a first pass at an iPhone HMI (Human Machine Interface). In particular the two things that aligned were my recent experience with PHP and MySQL and my new LabVIEW assignment. With these three pieces of software I was able to create a dynamic webpage that interacted with the LabVIEW hardware I had setup.

Figure: The HMI as it looks on an iPhone

Kinect Hack

My boss had some extra money left over after setting up our sister lab in Austin, TX. So he purchased a couple information displays to be placed at the watering holes. The displays would stream updates about what was happening in the labs and keep everyone informed.

Big Bonus this Month

Periodically my manager requests that we clean up the overstock. This month the overstock has some awesome bits of equipment, including the two new additions to the engraver. We now have a five foot long X axis and a theta axis to mount to the Engraver. The linear stage will add the needed stiffness with the additional benefit of allowing for longer work pieces. The theta stage will eventual be used for more complex cuts, but for now it just looks cool. Both stages are stepper motors with TTL inputs, so they should blend nicely with the LinuxCNC setup I have. Now I will have to study up on more advanced g-codes and tool path programming to take advantage of the theta stage.

Business Card Test Cut

Finally got the text to g-code to lay out my designs the way I wanted. The test cut looks pretty good. The board wasn't mounted very flat so the cut is a little deeper on the right side, but that's just a mechanical problem.

Text to G-Code

After several attempts to use open source CAD to G code programs, I came across a text to g code python script that was included in the EMC installation. Now I can create my business cards! It will take a little planning to set the offsets right and mesh the g codes together, but this is just in time for my new job and new business cards. I did a test cut and created legible text 4 mm high with a rather large ball bit on the dremel.

Engraving!

Finally! Our hard work and long hours drinking beer paid off. We engraved our first plaque today. The whole xyz stage assembly is shown below. The dremel was mounted by tapping a hole the same size as the dremel's collar and then screwing the tool into the mounting bracket.

Jogging the Stages

It has been a little while since we worked on the engraver. The last time we worked on it I had just gotten the pci parallel port installed and working when the computer crashed hard. So I called it quits that day. I had been unsure of the proper configuration of the parallel port address and so had chosen a number that appeared in one of the tutorials. I now know that this was the wrong number and caused a major fault. Today, after doing some more searching I was sure I had the right address, but still couldn't get any commands out the pci parallel port.

Spindle Assembly

The spindle mount has been designed and we started bolting everything in place. We had a used microscope stage that had precise up and down motion. A simple coupler was hacked together to mount a stepper motor onto the microscope stage. First testing proved that the unit performs smooth. We also had a friend mill out a mount for a Dremel tool.