Workpiece-zero on machine

[krekr]

One thing I'm missing, is the ability to see where the part will be cut (e.g. the top left corner) in the material. For instance, Moshidraw automatically moves the laser head to the position it was going to cut when you moved the piece in software. I like the idea of using a webcam to do this, but I think it would be awesome to have some kind of "go to workpiece zero" button to preview where the machine is going to do its magic.

[peteruithoven]

But... al the work just to see where the top left of your design is going to be lasercutted? Why not get the webcam system working? This let's you see how your complete design is going to be lasercutted.

[t-oster]

The
feautre you ask for should not be hard to implement at all. The main
problem is, that most lasercutters VisiCut supports work purely
job-based, meaning all we can do is create a job, which moves to a
certain position and then send this job. On most lasercutters one would
then have to press the start-button on the lasercutter and in the worst
case, the laserhead will return to its original position afterwards.

However since on the LAOS we have control over the complete firmware and
as long as you do not use a display, all jobs are executed immediately,
this would work.

I may have time this weekend to implement and test it. The main question
is how do we integrate it into the interface properly and how do we
handle lasercutters, which do not support this feature?

My first suggestion is just adding an item to the right-click
context-menu like "move the laserhead here". This will then create a job
which moves to the position of the cursor and send it.

If you are too impatient and want to fiddle around yourself, the
getting-started guide here
https://github.com/t-oster/VisiCut/wiki/Development:-Getting-started)
should give you a ready-to-use environment, where you can try stuff.

[t-oster]

BTW, any android programmer here who wants to create a VisiCam version for android? I have alle the ideas and libraries there, but just no time to actually code it....

[t-oster]

... sorry did not have time on the weekend ;)... but next weekend seems to be promising

[t-oster]

Hi.... in the current laos firmware, the lasercutter always goes to the rest-position after a job. (See this line https://github.com/LaosLaser/Firmware/blob/master/laser/main.cpp#L213). So you would also have to modify your firmware to get this feature working.
I can point you in the right direction, but since it won't work on epilog machines and currently also not on standard-laos machines, I don't think this feature will be useful for many.

However, I still think it is not too hard to implement.

[t-oster]

Hi... I just had an hour of time and implemented a first draft.
Here are the steps:

• Download my modified LAOS firmware: http://files.thomas-oster.de/laos-without-rest.bin
  (I just removed one line, you can also build it yourself from my fork. See this commit:
  t-oster/Firmware@5974afc
  )
• Set-Up a VisiCut build chain like described in the Wiki
• go to the "VisiCut" folder and "git checkout feature-move-head-position"
• Build and run VisiCut from NetBeans... if you rightclick somewhere in the space, the menu should contain "MOVE HEAD"
• If you're too lazy, here a binary version: http://files.thomas-oster.de/VisiCut-1.7-with-move-head.zip

[t-oster]

please continue the discussion in the pull request #177