eCNC Control GUI

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Easy CNC Controller GUI

• Easy CNC Controller GUI
  • Installation
  • Use Easy CNC Controller

Easy CNC Controller is a GUI that allows to control your CNC machine with Easy CNC firmware. The tasks of the GUI are essentially two:

• Control machine state: the eCNC Controller controls operations such as placing the utensil before the manifacturing, manage error messages, searching the home position and the z = 0 ...

• GCode management: the eCNC Controller loads the G-Code file and provides the GCode lines to the CNC machine. Moreover, it has to control the G-Code flow by stopping/pausing and restarting the transmission.

Installation

There are two ways to use the Easy CNC Controller:

1. You can download and run the latest version of the GUI compiled for your system (recommended).
2. You can use the latest version of the packet with the sources of the GUI. It means that you have to install Processing and run the GUI from the Processing IDE.

In each case, you have to install Java 7.

If you decide to follow the second metod, after the Processing installation, you run the IDE and you have to install the G4P library. To do that, you go to Sketch>Import Library...>Add Library..., than you search the G4P library and install it.

Now you can run the Easy CNC Controller.

Use Easy CNC Controller

Before running the eCNC Controller, you remember of connecting the Arduino board with the eCNC firmware.
When you run the eCNC Controller, you see the GUI below:

The GUI is divided into blocks. The Serial ports block is the first one that must be set to establish the connection with arduino. You select the port and the baud rate (it must be the same of the value specified in config.h). Pressing the Connect button, you should start to receive the data from arduino. You can check it because the fields in the CNC Status will become green and will appear the values of the axes and the machine status.

If you usually use the same serial port setup, you can save the setup by means of the Save button and reload it with the Load button.
You can start to move your machine using the joystick into the CNC Controls block or writing a G-Code command in the Console block, e.g. "G0 X10 Y5".

After the positioning the utensil in the position that you will have to be the axes origin, you can press the Reset Pos button to reset them to zero.

Now you can load the file with the G-Code of the manufacturing. In the G-Code file block, you press the Load button to open the file dialog and select the file that usually has .nc extension. In the future you will load the last loaded file with the Recent button.

If the file is loaded correctly, you should see the fields in the G-Code Info block that become green. Now, you can start the manufacturing. Pressing the Play button, the Control GUI begins to send, line by line, the G-Code to the Arduino.

If the eCNC firmware receives a G-Code instruction that is not recognited or an instruction that requires the manifacturing stop, you will see the status field in the CNC Status block that shows a message different from OK. You can reset the CNC status by means of the RESET STATUS button in the CNC Controls block and continue the manufacturing pressing again the Play button.

You can see the progress of the manufacturing in the Working area block or you can se the number of the processed line in the G-Code Info block.

TODO