Messages

101

General Mach Discussion / Re: MACH3 is reassigning motor pins by himself

« on: September 06, 2009, 04:26:43 PM »

after you set your pins, save and exit mach3, then restart mach, that should lock the settings. if it does not uninstal mach and do a fresh instal.
bill

102

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 06, 2009, 04:18:27 PM »

Rich

here is some lay work that i have been working on. these letters are .1875 tall. everything is done with mach3,l-cam and the text editor in mach3. the fonts were TT imported into l-cam.
there was alot of scaling and backplotting to get the master l-cam, then it was smooth sailing from there. as crappy as l-cam is , i have alot of fun with it, plus it has a ton of power. all the lays
are done and this week i do the pockets. the code and the butt are ready .

bill

103

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 06, 2009, 03:44:44 PM »

Hi,Rich

what you are saying about the mach3 import is true. the thing about the backplot move is to try to strip the dxf down to only the chains that are to be used. the target is to get a clean g-code drawing.
when you import it back in l-cam is going to move the chains as it sees fit, but it does not hurt the chains. you then move all the chains to new layers and arrange the layers to what you want. delete all old
layers. scale it up , do an optomize, then save as a l-cam file. now you have a master l-cam. another thing i do that helps alot is to draw a box border around the part wich will give l-cam 4 points for maximum
extents to locate of off while you work on the project. then you delete it like everything else before posting.

bill

104

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 06, 2009, 01:53:52 PM »

good morning steve
ok here is what i got,there are two forces working here and they are both bad. the first we know l-cam dont like small archs that it did not generate. the second is that your cad as nice as it draws has bad blood running in its veins that
l-cam can see but we cant. so when you try to do something with the original dxf l-cam is trying to work with the bad blood. everything come out sick. so what you have to do is filter the blood. believe it or not mach3 and l-cam makes
a good filter. your cad does draw nice as compared to others. so here is the plan to filter the blood. attached are two taps that i filtered, and they are g-code clones of your dxf.
the move is to take you dxf and just convert it to g-code, load it into mach3 then import back into l-cam. that filters the bad blood. you can play with it at the original scale and see how much better it works with l-cam.  but you will still
have trouble with pockets at that size, so scale up to pocket. this should help you smooth out the proccess.

bill

105

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 05, 2009, 10:58:53 PM »

Hi,Rich
steve has an idea of what he wants to do. he is just having a real hard time of getting his cad to work with l-cam. his last dxf worked worse than his first.
he cant save in v12 so it makes it a little tougher but his dxf can work. you keep pushing ideas on him and dont let up we got to get him trained or totaly confused. haha!
you cant quit now you are in as deep as i am.

bill

106

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 05, 2009, 10:43:10 PM »

steve
downloaded that last dxf you put up. it was a real pain. you got a right to go nuts over this. this one had more trouble with archs than the first. i made you a l-cam for this one.
i think this method might help you through this, plus show you another way to use l-cam. in this example we are going to use mach3 as a filter.
1.import file turn leads off
2.then scaled up 16 to 1 because the cutter you want to use is .015625
3.optomize
4.check scale
5.set origin
5.pick a tool,set all layers the same
6.post and save code
7.close then open l-cam
8.import back into l-cam from mach3
9.now you have a file to save as a l-cam file

the l-cam file i gave you was generated this way

bill

107

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 05, 2009, 08:49:26 PM »

good night guys we will play tomorrow. steve i will download this new dxf and look at it.

bill

108

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 05, 2009, 07:46:45 PM »

steve and vmax

i forgot to mention that if you have trouble with a dxf ,post it up here with a description and the tool. we will try to get you a good l-am file back that you can use.
everybody is in the same boat with l-cam until the rewrite.

bill

109

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 05, 2009, 07:33:53 PM »

steve

i used your file. the step by step is exactly how i did it.did not move any chains or alter them. it went real easy.
maybe it might be a graphic card thing. uninstall your card,shut down computer cold,let it reinstal the card. check for a driver update.
like you say it might be something else. do you have another computer you can try.

vmax there is a lot of things wrong with l-cam and the math is a big part of it. art said when he gets lathe done he is going to clean l-cam up and merge them.
l-cam does run better on more modern computers with better graphics cards. but that does not fix  the program.

bill

110

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Chains and entities question

« on: September 05, 2009, 03:23:36 PM »

steve

maybe your l-cam install was a bad one. do a uninstall and download a fresh copy of 3.00.2
your close, dont worry about the mule just keep on driving.

bill