Archive for category Software
Fu Mask Cutting Templates
Posted by Ed in COVID-19, Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-29
A local hospital contacted Mary’s quilting group to sew up cloth covers to prolong the life of their medical-grade N95 masks. Their recommended pattern, the Fu Face Mask from the FreeSewing group, comes in three sizes:
N.B.: Use their original PDF, because a JPG picture probably won’t come out at the right size.
Also N.B.: Used by itself, this is not a medical-grade filter mask.
The patterns do not include the usual 1/4 inch seam allowance around the outside, so I cranked out 3D printed plastic cutting templates.
If you’re not interested in 3D printing, 2D print the PDF file on cardboard, sketch a seam allowance, and cut it out, as quilters have been doing since slightly after home printers happened.
The plan of attack:
- Convert mask outlines into a bitmap image (GIMP)
- Create Bezier curves by tracing outlines (Inkscape)
- Save curves as SVG files
- Convert SVG into solid model (OpenSCAD)
- Add stiffening ribs &c
- Save as STL solid model
- Slice into G-Code file (Slic3r)
- Fire the M2!
So, we begin …
Import the PDF into The GIMP, delete the text & suchlike, convert to monochrome, and save the pattern outlines as a PNG file:
It turns out Inkscape can directly import the PDF, but it valiantly tries to convert all the text and the incidental graphic elements, none of which will be useful in this situation. It’s easier to delete them in The GIMP and make a bank shot off a PNG file.
Import the PNG into Inkscape and trace one outline with the Bezier curve tool:
If you squint really carefully, you’ll see Bezier control handles sticking out of the nodes. I laid three nodes along the top arc and four along the right side, but do what’cha like; the Insert key or Shift+I inserts and Delete removes nodes. It’s easier to center a node in the middle of the PNG line with snapping turned off: Shift+drag while mousing or globally with #.
You could unleash the bitmap auto-tracer, but it generates a bazillion uselessly tiny Bezier curves.
When you’re happy, select and copy the path with Ctrl+C, paste it into a shiny new Inkscape document (Ctrl+N) with Ctrl-V, save it with a catchy file name like Fu Mask - Small - nominal.svg, and close that document to return to the document with the PNG outlines and the original path.
Select the original path again, create a dynamic offset with Ctrl+J, open the XML editor with Ctrl+Shift+X (which automagically selects the proper SVG element), and change the inkscape:radius value from 0 to 6.35 (mm, which everyone should use) to get a 1/4 inch seam allowance:
The path will puff out with curved corners:
Copy into a new document, save as Fu Mask - Small - seam allowance.svg, and close.
Repeat that process for each of the three mask sizes to create three pairs of SVG files: the nominal mask outline and the corresponding seam allowance outline for each size.
The OpenSCAD program imports the SVG files, removes the nominal outline from within the seam allowance to leave the outline, adds stiffening ribs, and stamps an ID letter on both sides of the central button:
Choose one of the three sizes with the OpenSCAD customizer, save the resulting model as an STL file, repeat for the three sizes, and you’re done.
This process can convert any outline paths in SVG files into cutting templates, so, should the Fu Mask not suit your fancy, Use The Source.
For convenience, the STL files are on Thingiverse.
From the comments, a Washington hospital uses a similar pattern: their PDF with assembly instructions.
The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:
Verily, there’s nothing like a good new problem to take your mind off all your old problems …
Drag Knife Calibration: Downforce and Speed
Posted by Ed in Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-23
The drag knife faceplant suggested I must pay a bit more attention to fundamentals, so, with a 60° drag knife blade sticking out a reasonable amount, the next step is to see what effect the cutting “depth” (a.k.a. downforce) and speed have on the outcome.
A smidge of GCMC code later:
It’s not obvious, but each pattern steps downward by 0.5 mm from left to right. With the spring force equal to 375 g + 57 g/mm, the downforce ranges from 400 to 520 g over the five patterns.
Laminated scrap, meet drag knife:
Pulling up on the surrounding scrap left the patterns on the sticky mat:
Which suggested any cutting force would work just fine.
Flushed with success, I cut some speed variations at the minimum depth of Z=-0.5 mm = 400 g:
The blade cut through the top laminating film, the paper, and some sections of the bottom film, but mostly just scored the latter.
Repeating at Z=-1.5 mm = 460 g didn’t look much different:
However, the knife completely cut all the patterns:
As far as I can tell, the cutting speed doesn’t make much difference, although the test pattern is (deliberately) smooth & flowy like the Tek CC deck outlines. I’d been using 1000 mm/min and 2000 mm/min seems scary-fast, so 1500 mm/min may be a good compromise.
The GCMC source code as a GitHub Gist:
Round Soaker Hose Splint
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-20
One of two new round rubber soaker hoses arrived with a slight crimp, enough to suggest it would crumble at an inopportune moment. Rather than return the hose for something that’s not an obvious failure, I clamped the crimp:
Unlike the clamps for the punctured flat soaker hoses, this one doesn’t need to withstand much pressure and hold back a major leak, so I made the pieces a bit thicker and dispensed with the aluminum backing plates:
The solid model is basically the same as for the flat hoses, with a slightly oval cylinder replacing the three channels:
The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:
CNC Kitchen Sink Strainer
Posted by Ed in Home Ec, Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-19
Our Young Engineer recently rented a house, now knows why our sinks have CNC-machined strainers, and asked for something better than the disgusting stainless mesh strainer in the kitchen sink.
Being a doting father, I turned out a pair to get a pretty one:
They’re made from the same scrap smoked acrylic as the ones in our sinks:
They’re definitely upscale from the (not watertight!) 3D printed version I built for a Digital Machinist column to explain OpenSCAD modeling:
This time around, though, I rewrote the subtractive design in GCMC, with helical milling for all the holes to eliminate the need to change tools:
They’re done on the Sherline, because it has real clamps:
Four tabs eliminated the need to reclamp the stock before cutting the perimeter, but I should have ramped, not plunged, through the final cut between the tabs:
The handles come from the same chunk of hex acrylic as before, eyeballed to length, tapped 8-32, and secured with acrylic adhesive.
The GCMC source code as a GitHub Gist:
All in all, a pleasant diversion from contemporary events …
GRBL Error 33: Arc Coordinates vs. Decimal Places
Posted by Ed in Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-18
The LinuxCNC G2/G3 arc command doc has this to say about numerical precision:
When programming arcs an error due to rounding can result from using a precision of less than 4 decimal places (0.0000) for inch and less than 3 decimal places (0.000) for millimeters.
So I normally set GCMC to produce three decimal digits, because its default of eight digits seems excessive for my usual millimeter measurements, and assume whatever G-Code sender I use won’t chop digits off the end in passing. Mistakenly setting bCNC to round at two decimal places showed what happens with fewer digits, as bCNC’s default is four decimal digits.
A closer look at the coordinates in the lower right part of the spreadsheets (from yesterday) shows the limited accuracy with two decimal digits:
The red blocks mark the first failing arc, where the relative error falls out of tolerance. If GRBL were less fussy (which it should not be), then the next arcs would proceed as shown.
Rounding to three decimal digits pushes the errors into to the third place, with the yellow highlight marking the worst errors:
As you should expect, the smallest arcs have the largest relative errors, although they’re now well within GRBL’s (and LinuxCNC’s, for that matter) limits.
Rounding to four decimal digits makes the errors vanishingly small:
So, by and large, don’t scrimp on the decimal digits … but we knew that already.
I’d been setting GRBL to produce three decimal places, but now I’m using four. Adding a few characters to each G-Code command reduces the number of commands fitting into GRBL’s buffer space, but bCNC normally keeps it around 90% full, so the path planner should remain perfectly happy.
GRBL Error 33: G-Code Arc Tolerances
Posted by Ed in Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-17
After figuring out how two-place decimal fractions caused this blooper, I had to poke into the debris field surrounding the crash:
The bCNC Terminal trace stops at the first failure, so I set GCMC to produce two-place fractions (“Number of decimals less than 3 severely limits accuracy”), then rammed the NGC file’s G-Code into a spreadsheet:
The last two columns (perhaps you must open the image in a new tab to see the whole thing) compute the GRBL error values: the absolute difference between the two radii and that difference as a fraction of the radius. The R Error header under Start should be X, of course; I’ll regenerate the images for the DM column.
The reduced accuracy of the two-digit fractions triggers the error marked by the red cells, where the radii differ by 0.0082 mm (>0.005) and the relative error is 0.17% (>0.1%).
Suppressing the first failed arc by passing the same starting point to the next arc simulates the second failure:
Similarly, the third arc from the same point fails:
The fourth arc becomes a full circle and produces the circular gash across the deck:
Two digits definitely aren’t enough!
bCNC Rounding vs. G-Code Arcs: GRBL Error 33
Posted by Ed in Machine Shop, Software on 2020-03-16
While cutting the top deck of the Pickett-flavored Tek Circuit Computer on the MPCNC, this happened:
I traced the off-center circle with a marker to make it more visible, as it’s the drag knife cut that should have been the exit move after completing the window.
Huh. It never did that before …
The bCNC plot looked fine, but the Terminal log showed three Error 33 reports:
The GRBL doc has this to say about Error 33:
The motion command has an invalid target. G2, G3, and G38.2 generates this error, if the arc is impossible to generate or if the probe target is the current position.The error messages don’t occur immediately after the failing G2/G3 command, because bCNC sends enough commands to keep the GRBL serial input buffer topped off. After GRBL sends the error message, it continues chewing its way through the buffer and, when bCNC notices the first error, it stops sending more G-Code commands and shudders to a stop.
The great thing about Free Software is that when it breaks, you have all the pieces. Looking into the GRBL source code provides a definition of Error 33:
// [G2/3 Offset-Mode Errors]: No axis words and/or offsets in selected plane. The radius to the current
// point and the radius to the target point differs more than 0.002mm (EMC def. 0.5mm OR 0.005mm and 0.1% radius).Which doesn’t quite match the code, but it’s close enough:
// Compute difference between current location and target radii for final error-checks.
float delta_r = fabs(target_r-gc_block.values.r);
if (delta_r > 0.005) {
if (delta_r > 0.5) { FAIL(STATUS_GCODE_INVALID_TARGET); } // [Arc definition error] > 0.5mm
if (delta_r > (0.001*gc_block.values.r)) { FAIL(STATUS_GCODE_INVALID_TARGET); } // [Arc definition error] > 0.005mm AND 0.1% radius
}I’ve drag-knifed maybe a dozen top decks with no problem, so figuring out what broke took a while.
The key turned out to be in the Terminal log, where all coordinates in the G-Code commands had, at most, two decimal places. The GCMC program producing the G-Code emits three decimal places, so bCNC rounded off a digit before squirting commands to GRBL.
After more searching, it seems I’d told bCNC to do exactly that:
Perhaps I’d mistakenly set “Decimal digits” instead of “DRO Zero padding” when I reduced the DRO resolution from three decimals to two? It’s set to “2” in the CNC 3018XL configuration, so this seems like a typical one-off brain fade.
GRBL doesn’t execute invalid commands, so the tool position remains at the end of the window’s outer perimeter while the next two arc commands fail, because their center offsets produced completely invalid radii.
The three failed arc commands should have cut the right end of the window, the inner side, and the left end, but left the tool position unchanged. The final arc command should have withdrawn the blade along the outer side of the window, but became a complete circle, with the commanded end point equal to the leftover starting point at the same radius from the deck center.
The same G-Code file fails consistently with Decimal digits = 2 and runs perfectly with Decimal digits = 3, so at least I know a good fix.
Protip: Keep your hands away from moving machinery, because you never know what might happen!
This seems sufficiently obscure to merit becoming a Digital Machinist column. More analysis is in order …
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