Measure dialog Black box is the machine tool / simulator. Anything I would do in the simulator 
Measure Box. This simulates the machine tool. You'll see probe, part and other things.
Select Model | Type of part. Firs thing to do is pick sphere. CTRL | RC. F1, F2, F3. He has a doc to set this up.

Next start NC gage. 
Once start. It will try to connect to the machine. Once it connects the CAD model will turn this lighter shade of green and system message will show it's connected. 

Controller is small LCD screen with soft buttons. Number 10 11, 12. NC gage will fill up that entire screen and then below our buttons is a soft key to make things happen.

1st do a calibration.
menus at the bottom change to reflect the calibration types we can do.
Click sphere and screen pops up.

upper left will always give a picture of what it's expecting to do.
text in center is what we'd like it to do with probe.
 
With machine, no joy stick. put the probe relative to the feature you're going to measure. Machine probe tools have a lot of 
Tip has been vector compensated, It's been compensated along every single vector of 160 points we're measuring.

Feed Rate - move speed
WCS = Work coordinate system
MCS = Machine coordinate system

The way the simulator and NC gage work, it's not easy to change the model. Have to shut down the simulator and load a new model. If I shut down simulator, nc gage can't see machine tool. First shut down nc gage, shut down simulator, load simulator, load new model, load nc gage etc. 

NCGage has no CAD or graphics window. You'll just use it to measure geometrics. It's a very low level software. It measures some of hte basic features, little quickly alignments (321 type stuff) and that's about it. Beyond that we generate reports.

Sounds simple, but in Machine Tool world that's pretty difficult. With NC Gage we're hoping to make things that are really hard a lot easier.

ONce the sphere has been calibrated, it says "Calibration: Yes.
Software wants you to go through a standard sequence of events:
1) Calibrate'
2) Identify an alignment.
Machine tools are always in DCC mode. You cannot manually drive the machine around. The software has to drive the machine and find the features.

To do this we have to identify a work offset. Which is an alignment. In Machine Tool code this is called G54.
All machine tools from diff vendors have similar G and M code lingo.

Window on left shows program flow. Not editable.

G54 - 
	G54 - pick one that already exists and how to do quick inspections. Will show a list of work offses (alignments on machine tool). Which work offset is available. Click OK and 
	
Next define clearance points / clearance planes defined. Since no real manual feedback to position 

On the machine tool they would position it with like a jog box and press this button +! to read probe position. Value shows up in Plane Height, when click OK shows up in program. If decide don't like it click Back to last step -!. 

Comment box allows comments into program.

Calibration: Yes
Clearance Plane: Yes

I can now measure stuff.

Click on Measure icon. Common theme:
5 buttons --middle green-- 5 buttons
middle green just shows it's connected.
middle green it may be removed.


If on machine tool controller itself.
9 diff features to measure.
	
Return buttons take you back to the previous upper level screen.

NCGage is a much stripped down version. With this, it's not NCGage that's doing the math all the time. Sometimes we have ot relay on the controller and macros. Because we do that we can't realy on an exact 1 to 1 model of what we do in NCServer.

NCGage talks to certain machines.

Position Probe to center. Click on the Read Position button. Click on OK button the probe goes out and measures something. Software knows it's looking ofr a circle and it probes in four directions and finds the center of the hole.

Use clearnace plane check box - use cp between hits. If i had bore with pin in middle. Option lets you drive back up to the clearance plane between every point that you measure inside this feature.

Use value in edit control - Lets me type in the nominal values.

Learn then measure - You saw me position probe so it wasn't in the center. Find hole and then go back and remeasure it. It will go back and measure to get true measurement results.

Measure Corner:
Take four hits two on one side, two on another.

[Machine tool will be in dirty dark environment so we need to have things that contrast a lot.]

Buttons
Read Postion
Delete current command - 
New / Edit - 
Z+ - Allows measurement of circles in planes other than XY. [not yet available]

Tolerances - Define tolerances
Help Icon - opens help.

Some of the machine tools don't have a mouse perse. A mouse will have to "click" using touch screen on the dialogs. 


[NC Gage 30 days allow them to use program, but can't save programs. After 30 days can't do anything.]

View Report Button - Standard Generic Style report. For a machine tool this is really handy for them. Print button. Save button.

Program button - Get around in program or execute from certain commands etc.
		Go to beginning
		Go to end
		
M&H was selling 3DForm Inspect.

Think basic steps for help design. High volume product but not a high revenue product. Enough that the customer can figure things out early on. Tutorial product similar to multigage. 

This software is step 1 of what we're going to distrubte. This is meant to be a demo to OEMS who will distribute it for us. Down the road more user-friendly, more marketable. 

File Manager - Save, Delete, or Load programs.

Setup Screen - 
Round off to nearest decimal place on even number.
.0015 rounded to .002

Error Report - If you have unexpected probe hits, or problems connected to machine, it wil lshow a siplisitic log file. Connection information, unexpected probe hits, unexpected end of moves (it'll give error codes that happen since NC gage were open.) Not enough information to use it to debug a program.                                                            

YES / NO - to exit the software.

NCServer - used to learn alignments (work offsets) or measure parts. If I want to learn a new work offset, use same g54, select diff features to learn a new work offset. Concept is the same. 
Two axes bore
Move the probe down inside 
Read Position
Click the work offset to update
Click OK.
All that did was set G58 to the center of that circle. All work offsets are stored back on the controller. Somewhere there's a G58 registry entry with a center of the circle.

Pick a feature you're going to use as an alignment feature.

Most of the time a machine tool guy will be doing very simple stuff. He's not going to do be fiddling around with multiple work offsets.

Timeline for tutorial product: NCGage v1 is right where we want it now. We're going through beautification process. As far as core capability, it's ready to go right now. The next product is NCAlign.

NCGage is interactive product. IT's talking to one machine tool and always tlaking back and forth with that tool.

NCAlign will be an even simpler version of NCGage. It will let you do a program and output it to several diff programs. Very simple way to get little routines out to machine tools. 

NCGage v2 will have 5 axis control, probe in more than just Z+ orientation. Available Q4. 

[Guys using it are low levels guys. They're not metrologists. They're in a harsh environment, they're tyring to do some really quickie type checks. Give feedback if something makes more sense to you.]

