[p_sorey]

Machine Basic Description:

Our 3-D printer (fabrication nearly complete) has circular rails, 1) full 360-degree track in the X-Y plane for rotation around the Z-axis. 2) on that track, standing up vertically at 90 degrees to the circular track, rotates a half-circle arch gantry, and, 3) along that gantry travels a tool carriage holding a linear actuator with the printing nozzle that points towards the center of the hemisphere circumscribed by the arcs.

Inside the spherical space circumscribed by the rails of the machine, is a smaller diameter, roughly hemispherical form (with some protrusions) that we are going to spray onto.

Attachment 276774

Current Plan and Questions:
The machine uses 3 axes to coordinate arrival at xyz, and then has a knuckle, (either 1 or 2 axes, we're not sure yet) to point the spray sideways and perhaps up and down. Two of the three axes are driven by 1500W servos with H2N-TD AC Servo Drivers, the arch gantry is driven by two, one at the base of each end. The plan is to mark each quadrant of the circle with magnets, and if a mismatch is detected (I.e, if the two ends do not show as exactly 180 degrees apart, a PID routine will bring them back into alignment.

Questions:
1. I assume we need 2 separate streams of Gcode, what is the basic method for this?
2. Can one KFLOP board handle a 5-axis system, or do we need two? (sorry for basic questions).
3. We will not use the board stand-alone, but will want to stream Gcode in real time, based on information gathered while traversing the path. Where is a FIFO buffer that we can stream the Gcode into for processing by KFLOP?

We plan to perform spherical to xyz conversion in KMotion, kinetics_spherical.cpp, subclassed from Kinetics class so we can have xyz Gcode, and can read xyz coordinates from the KMotion display. Could use help with this:

Questions:
1. Our machine's x-axis is circular, and infinite. We will go around and around the hemisphere working our way from bottom to top. Kinetics_xxx.cpp needs to know axis lengths, so how do I handle this?
2. When generating Gcode we would like to simply use a series of 3D points along our path. How will KFlop know to keep going forward when we have made one revolution?
3. I believe Rhino/RhinoCam or Rhino/VisualMill can plan our 5-axis paths, is that correct?

We are in Eugene, OR, if anyone is nearby, I'd love to pick your brain!

Thank you,

Paul

[TomKerekes]

Hi Paul,

See responses to the same post on our Yahoo Group:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/...messages/11382

Regards