Hacking a Roland CAMM3 PNC-3000

[Robin Hewitt]

I love this machine, just wish it was a little bigger. looks sturdy tho, what materials you gonna be cutting on it?

Aluminiglum so it has to sprout splashguards and suds before I can try it out.

MSC/J&L are having a 35% off catalogue sale and I think I just bought 3-4-5 & 6mm super precision ER16 collets for £12.51 a pop plus tax. Apparently, as I just gleaned, ER16 collet precision is measured at a hypothetical tool tip 10mm in front of the collet. Standard ebay precision, DIN 6499, is .013mm (half a thou) but this ETM bunch do standard precision at .010mm and super precision at .005mm.

In the old days before resistors were laser trimmed, if you bought a 10k 5% then you knew it would never be exactly 10k because that would have dropped in the 1% tray on test.

Wonder if collets are the same :naughty:

[Robin Hewitt]

Lengthy pause while I took a crash course in C#/XAML programming so I could do the Roland controller.

So far I have read in a G code, smashed the arcs into a zillion straight lines so that the .005mm resolution is never compromised, saved it as 32bit relative and read it back to the screen to see if it looks right. Screen shot in the pic is Windows 7.

Next, talking to it... :naughty:

Robin

[Robin Hewitt]

Well it now seems to be cutting. I really like this WIndows programming malarky paticularly the practically unlimited memory. I'm going to have to change my Warco over to Windows next, I can see it coming, I could do wonderful things if I wasn't struggling not to timeout on a 4MHz Z80.

With a 1024 line buffer in the Roland I am immune to the odd Windows delay, I can shrink it down and do other stuff while it's cutting.

I added a little picture of a Roland drawn in 3 parts so I can move the bed and head around to reflect the actual machine positions. Windows sorts it all out, no flicker at all, it is strangely fascinating to watch.

Next the tool position cursors, I think perhaps a pointy tool image in ISO mode rather than recreating the actual tool. Make it easy to see exactly where it is on the tool path. In plan view something akin to a Moire point perhaps.

best

Robin