QtDragon GUI

QtDragon and QtDragon_hd are built with the QtVCP framework. It is the creative vision of forum personality Persei8. Much of it is based on the excellent work of others in the LinuxCNC community. LinuxCNC’s version is adapted from Persei8’s Github versions. It is primarily meant for 3/4 axes machines such as mills or routers. It works well with a touchscreen and/or mouse. QtDragon supports multiple ways to touch off tools and probing work pieces. You can use LinuxCNC’s external offsets capability to automatically raise the spindle during a pause. If you the VersaProbe option and remap code you can add auto tool length probing at tool changes.

If your configuration is not currently set up to use QtDragon, you can change it by editing the INI file sections. For an exhaustive list of options, see the display section of the INI file documentation.

QtDragon is not intended to primarily use a keyboard for machine control.
It lacks many keyboard short cuts that for instance AXIS has - but you can use a mouse or touchscreen.
There are several key presses that will control the machine for convenience.

Buttons that are checkable will change their text colour when checked. This is controlled by the stylesheet/theme

QtDragon includes a virtual keyboard for use with touchscreens. To enable the keyboard, check the Use Virtual Keyboard checkbox in the Settings page. Clicking on any input field, such as probe parameters or tool table entries, will show the keyboard. To hide the keyboard, do one of the following:

It should be noted that keyboard jogging is disabled when using the virtual keyboard.

These pins are specific to the QtDragon screen.
There are of course are many more HAL pins that must be connected for LinuxCNC to function.

If you need a manual tool change prompt, add these lines in your postgui file.
QtDragon emulates the hal_manualtoolchange HAL pins - don’t load the separate HAL component hal_manualtoolchange.

Also if you don’t have an automatic tool changer make sure these pins are connected in one of the HAL files:

This input pin should be connected to indicate probe state.

These pins are inputs related to spindle VFD indicating.
The volt and amp pins are used to calculate spindle power. You must also set the MAX_SPINDLE_POWER in the INI.

This bit pin is an output to the spindle control to pause it.
You would connect it to spindle.0.inhibit.

QtDragon spindle speed display and spindle-at-speed LED require that spindle.0.speed-in be connected to spindle speed feedback.
Encoder or VFD feedback could be used, as long as the feedback is in revolutions per second (RPS).
If no feedback is available you can have the display show the requested speed by connecting pins like so:

This bit output pin can be connected to turn on a laser:

This float output pin indicates the camera rotation in degrees:

These bit/s32/float pins are related to external offsets if they are used:

These float output pins reflect the current slider jograte (in machine units):

These float output pins reflect the current slider override rates:

These output pins are available when setting the Versa Probe INI option. They can be used for auto-tool-length-probe at tool change - with added remap code.

This input pin is available to toggle pause/resume of a running program.

The HAL files supplied are for simulation only. A real machine needs its own custom HAL files. The QtDragon screen works with 3 or 4 axes with one joint per axis or 3 or 4 axes in a gantry configuration (2 joints on 1 axis).

If your machine requires manual tool changes, QtDragon can pop a message box to direct you. QtDragon emulates the hal_manualtoolchange HAL pins - don’t load the separate HAL component hal_manualtoolchange. Hereto you must connect the proper HAL pin in the postgui HAL file, for example:

The screen is intended to interface to a VFD, but will still work without it.
There are a number of VFD drivers included in the LinuxCNC distribution.
It is up to the end user to supply the appropriate driver and HAL file connections according to his own machine setup.

QtDragon can be set up to automatically raise and lower the Z axis and stop the spindle, when the program is paused.
You select the SPINDLE LIFT or NO SPINDLE LIFT button to select the option to raise the spindle in Z when paused.
Then when you press the PAUSE button the spindle will lift the amount set on the Settings tab and the spindle will stop.
Pressing RESUME will start the spindle and lower the spindle.
If you have the HAL pin spindle.0.at-speed connected to a driving pin, the spindle will not lower until the pin is true
You typically connect this to a timer or logic that detects the speed of the spindle.
If that pin is not connected to a driving pin, a dialog will pop up to warn you to wait for the spindle response.
The spindle will lower when you close that dialog.
The amount to raise is set in the Settings tab under the heading SPINDLE RAISE.
This line edit box can only be directly set when not in Auto mode.
The up/down buttons can be used to adjust the raise amount at any time, including when the spindle is already raised.
The button increments are 1 inch or 5 mm (depending on the units the machine is based on)

This optional behaviour requires additions to the INI and the QtDragon_postgui HAL file.

In the INI, under the AXIS_Z heading.

This reserves 20% of max velocity and max acceleration for the external offsets.
This will limit max velocity of the machine by 20%

In the qtdragon_postgui.hal file add:

QtDragon_hd can be set up to probe and compensate for Z level height changes by utilizing the external program G-code Ripper.

Z level compensation is a bed levelling/distortion correction function typically used in 3D printing or engraving. It uses a HAL non-realtime component which utilizes the external offsets feature of LinuxCNC. The component has a HAL pin that specifies an interpolation type, which must be one of cubic, linear or nearest (0, 1, 2 respectively). If none is specified or if an invalid number is specified, the default is assumed to be cubic.

When Z LEVEL COMP is enabled, the compensation component reads a probe data file, which must be called probe_points.txt. The file can be modified or updated at any time while compensation is disabled. When next enabled, the file will be reread and the compensation map is recalculated. This file is expected to be in the configuration directory.

The probe data file is generated by a probing program, which itself is generated by an external python program called gcode_ripper, which can be launched from the file manager tab using the G-code Ripper button.

The probe screen has been through basic testing but there could still be some minor bugs. When running probing routines, use extreme caution until you are familiar with how everything works. Probe routines run without blocking the main GUI. This gives the operator the opportunity to watch the DROs and stop the routine at any time.

QtDragon has 2 methods for setting Z0. The first is a touchplate, where a metal plate of known thickness is placed on top of the workpiece, then the tool is lowered until it touches the plate, triggering the probe signal. The current user system’s (G5x) Z0 is set to probe height - the entered plate thickness.

The second method uses a tool setter in a fixed position and a known height above the table where the probe signal will be triggered. In order to set Z0 to the top of the workpiece, it has to know

This operation has to be done every time the tool is changed as the tool length is not saved.

For touching off with a touch probe, whether you use the touchplate operation with thickness set to 0 or use a probing routine, the height from table to top of workpiece parameter is not taken into account and can be ignored. It is only for the tool setter.

You can use a conductive touch plate or equivalent to auto touch off (zero the user coordinate) for the Z position of a tool. There must be a tool loaded prior to probing. In the tool tab or settings tab, set the touch plate height, search and probe velocity and max. probing distance.

Place the plate on top of the surface you wish to zero Z on. Connect the probe input wire to the tool (if using a conductive plate). There is a LED to confirm the probe connection is reliable prior to probing. Move the tool manually within the max probe distance. Press the Touch Plate button. The machine will probe down twice and the current user offset (G5X) will be zeroed at the bottom of the plate by calculation from the touchplate height setting.

QtDragon can be setup to do integrated auto tool measurement using the Versa Probe widget and remap code. To use this feature, you will need to do some additional settings and you may want to use the offered HAL pin to get values in your own ngc remap procedure.

Tool Measurement in QtDragon is done with the following steps:

With the first given tool change the tool will be measured and the offset will be set automatically to fit the block height. The advantage of this way is, that you do not need a reference tool.

The sequence of events (using the default files):

A G-code program can be started at any line by clicking on the desired line in the G-code display while in AUTO mode. It is the operator’s responsibility to ensure the machine is in the desired operational mode. A dialog will be shown allowing the spindle direction and speed to be preset. The start line is indicated in the box labelled LINE, next to the CYCLE START button. The run from line feature can be disabled in the settings page.

The LASER ON/OFF button in intended to turn an output on or off which is connected to a small laser crosshair projector. When the crosshair is positioned over a desired reference point on the workpiece, the REF LASER button can be pushed, which then sets the X and Y offsets to the values indicated by the LASER OFFSET fields in the Settings page.

Tabs allow the user to select the most appropriate info/control on the top three panels. If the on screen keyboard is showing and the user wishes to hide it but keep the current tab, they can do that by pressing the current show tab. In QtDragon, there is a splitter handle between the G-code text display and the G-code graphical display. One can use this to split the size between the two areas. This can be set differently in each tab and in each mode.

Nearly all aspects of the GUI appearance are configurable via the QtDragon.qss stylesheet file. The file can be edited manually or through the stylesheet dialog widget in the GUI. To call up the dialog, press F12 on the main window. New styles can be applied temporarily and then saved to a new qss file, or overwrite the current qss file.

It is possible to create translation files for QtDragon to display in the language of the current locale.

To create and or edit a translation file requires that LinuxCNC has been installed as run in place.

The following assumes that the linuxcnc git directory is ~/linuxcnc-dev.

All language files are kept in ~/linuxcnc-dev/share/screens/qtdragon/languages.

The qtdragon.py file is a Python version of the GUI file used for translation purposes.

The .ts files are the translation source files for the translations. These are the files that require creating/editing for each language.

The .qm files are the compiled translation files used by pyqt.

The language is determined by an underscore plus the first two letters of the locale, for example if an Italian translation was being done then it would be _it. It will be referred to as _xx in this document, so qtdragon_xx.ts in this document would actually be qtdragon_it.ts for an Italian translation.

The default locale for QtDragon is _en which means that any translation files created as qtdragon_en.* will not be used for translations.

If any of the required utilities (pyuic5, pylupdate5, linguist) are not installed then the user will need to install the required development tools:

Change to the languages directory:

If any text changes have been made to the GUI then run the following to update the GUI Python file:

The user can either create a new translation source file for a non-existing language translation or modify an existing translation source file due to changes being made to some text in a QtDragon source file. If modifying an existing translation that has had no source file changes then this step is not required.

Create or edit a .ts file:

The editing of the translation is done with the linguist application:

It is not necessary to provide a translation for every text string, if no translation is specified for a string then the original string will be used in the application. The user needs to be careful with the length of strings that appear on widgets as space is limited. If possible try to make the translation no longer than the original.

When editing is complete save the file:
File -> Save

Then create the .qm file:
File -> Release

QtDragon will be translated to the language of the current locale on the next start so long as a .qm file exists in that language.

Users are welcome to submit translation files for inclusion into QtDragon. The preferred method is to submit a pull request from the users GitHub account as described in the contributing to LinuxCNC documentation. The only files required to be committed are qtdragon_xx.ts and qtdragon_xx.qm.

A general overview of Customizing Stock Screens.