idea for "enhanced machining interface" - semi-automatic physical user interface

Dear LinuxCNC community!

Maybe I am not the first one to the idea for an interface that would integrate enhanced CNC functionality into a simple-to-use manual interface. At least I don't know of any such a project or available product. I tried to create a short brief of the idea in this Document. It is very brief on purpose - I would like to get some feedback from you and start the discussion and would be very happy to add more details and ideas later. I have been thinking about this for over ten years know but always lacked the capability and ressources to implement something of such complexity.

So my questions:

1. does anyone know something like this exists already?
2. what are your thoughts on the idea and functionality? Would you see value in this?
3. could anyone imagine to help implementing this into LinuxCNC?

My background is more mechanical and in our team the software people do not have sufficient ressources and detailed knowledge of LinuxCNC. So I could only support this by structuring the idea and project and designing and prototyping the actual physical interface. Of couse I would be keen on testing and evaluating this as well! I would like to maintain the opensource character of LinuxCNC and additional components but I could still imagine working commercially on some aspects of this idea like selling the physical interface, integrating this into professional workshops or similar.

Excited to hear your comments and start the discussion!

My personal opinion is, if you have a CNC it is simpler to program the movements you are asking for with conventional CNC gcode programed by hand alone or with cad/cam than it would be to try to learn to use the special manual features you are proposing. (A lot of witch more or less already exist as standard features.)

The cost of cad/cam software is virtually a non issue with surprisingly capable options available for as little as free (FreeCad).

I would explore external offsets to achieve this.
Once the mode and origin was set, you could offset the Z axis based on the X axis position by some formula set by the mode.

Todd Zuercher wrote:

My personal opinion is, if you have a CNC it is simpler to program the movements you are asking for with conventional CNC gcode programed by hand alone or with cad/cam than it would be to try to learn to use the special manual features you are proposing. (A lot of witch more or less already exist as standard features.)

The cost of cad/cam software is virtually a non issue with surprisingly capable options available for as little as free (FreeCad).
 

Thanks for the feedback! I agree on the point that this is of course in competition with fully automated cnc machines. Still I think that the interface would be very easy to learn, much easier than using a CAM tool. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but creating a new program always take at least 30min until it really runs on a machine. And there might be parts that can't be manufactured manually due to round corners / chamfers or angles thus requiring a CNC machine and time in the CAM program which might not pay back for prototypes or small series. So what I am proposing clearly only makes sense for prototypes or small series.
Thanks for mentioning the free CAM programs. I did not know that FreeCAD offers CAM as well. We have been using kiriMoto as a plugin for onshape. Normally we use CAMWorks / Solidworks CAM since it is integrated in SolidWorks which is our CAD tool in use. Do you know any more CAM tools or do you have experience with any of these, especially for easy use for simple parts?

rodw wrote:

I would explore external offsets to achieve this.
Once the mode and origin was set, you could offset the Z axis based on the X axis position by some formula set by the mode.
 

thanks for the remark! Could you please elaborate a bit further? I think you are referring to this? linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/motion/external-offsets.html From what I understood after briefly reading over this I think angles or constant offsets on one axis could be achieved, but what about contours? Still, this might be a good starting point to dive a little deeper into the subject.
I also thought for contour modes, G41 / G42 commands could be used when the contour is imported into linuxCNC. Is there something like a dxf -> gcode importer already available?

There used to be a conversational cam called 'nativecam' that could be installed which i still use on my machine but is python2 and thus is no longer supported since version 2.9. As mentioned there are features like adaptive feed, external offsets, angle jog, custom kinematics, machine vision and so on.
For dxf to gcode you could use software like sheetcam.
The thing is that LinuxCNC is a gcode interpreter, it eats gcode and puts out the motion commands. So for machine programming your first choice would be to look at/ create your own subroutines with parameters which is what NativeCAM does.
Frankly I doubt you will get anywhere with this if you can't do the programming yourself.

github.com/FernV/NativeCAM