JaredMcLaughlin
Aluminum
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Howdy. As you might notice if you cruise through my past posts, I have been a machinist for a while - somewhere around a decade. However, I collected some community college credits while making parts and decided to turn them in to a computer science degree.
Why? Ideally because I want to be involved in making machining better in some way. I'm at the point in my education where small projects are feasible, so I'm back here to find out what little bits of software might be useful.
My big focus is on the little things that impact CAM programming, but here's my little list of things I _might_ be able to pull off, and I feel are useful. I welcome your ideas and will tolerate your crude comments.
1. Conversion utilities for gcode. I should be able to write something that takes gcode from one controller and spits it out for another. I think best case it would miss a ton of stuff, but would save the bulk of the effort if you had to do it. Might not be super useful, but is useful for my educational purposes.
2. Quick "bulk edit" for gcode. Need to scoot the tool plane around in z but hand coded some sections so just reposting isn't an option?
3. Tool library conversation between different software formats.
4. Tormach / linuxcnc MTConnect module. Unlikely to be relevant to folks here, but I can run linuxcnc without a machine to get experience writing software for the MTConnect protocol.
What slows you down that you think a plugin or simple external utility might help with? I've written to most of the CAM companies to see about getting neutered versions of their software to practice writing plugins.
Why? Ideally because I want to be involved in making machining better in some way. I'm at the point in my education where small projects are feasible, so I'm back here to find out what little bits of software might be useful.
My big focus is on the little things that impact CAM programming, but here's my little list of things I _might_ be able to pull off, and I feel are useful. I welcome your ideas and will tolerate your crude comments.
1. Conversion utilities for gcode. I should be able to write something that takes gcode from one controller and spits it out for another. I think best case it would miss a ton of stuff, but would save the bulk of the effort if you had to do it. Might not be super useful, but is useful for my educational purposes.
2. Quick "bulk edit" for gcode. Need to scoot the tool plane around in z but hand coded some sections so just reposting isn't an option?
3. Tool library conversation between different software formats.
4. Tormach / linuxcnc MTConnect module. Unlikely to be relevant to folks here, but I can run linuxcnc without a machine to get experience writing software for the MTConnect protocol.
What slows you down that you think a plugin or simple external utility might help with? I've written to most of the CAM companies to see about getting neutered versions of their software to practice writing plugins.
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