Messages

1

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Help with offsetting

« on: November 07, 2011, 04:32:25 PM »

OK , i tried it and after a while i managed to get what your attached picture showed , i outputed to mach3 and ran it.
It machined the vanes in the right place but as pockets where they should have been islands so when the code finished i ended up with a very large pocket with absolutely nothing left inside . I tried running it through with a 6mm cutter in stead of the 10mm tool i used when creating the code but same result.
I then tried selecting only some of the chains around the vanes hoping that it would leave at least something  but i keep getting bad lines in the code when i load it into mach3.
Any ideas?

2

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Help with offsetting

« on: November 04, 2011, 06:04:22 PM »

OK thanks

3

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Help with offsetting

« on: November 04, 2011, 05:47:09 PM »

Thanks for the quick reply Russ i appreciate it , will try this out tomorrow.
I take it i just draw the circle in LT or am i missing something again.
Would i always need to leave bulges as islands in a pocket regardless of shape or it is just the odd shape of the vanes that caused the problem?

Thanks again.

4

LazyCam (Beta) / Help with offsetting

« on: November 04, 2011, 04:30:09 PM »

Hi Guys

I am trying to make a plastic pump impeller and the vanes are shown in the attached drawing, i will be cutting 5mm deep in 10mm stock so the shapes are effectively bulges when its finished.I have been trying to create the tool path using offset. I have read the LC manual and watched the videos and have been trying for ages to get a tool path that leaves the bulge( even one at a time doing 5 complete machinings would suffice) all i get are weird shapes that are nothing like the drawn part. The nearest i can get is a complete circle that follows one outer curve but cuts completely through where the other vanes would be. What am i doing wrong? I imported the shapes sample and was able to generate the correct tool path for cutting them as bulges so i think i understand the basics. I have read on this forum that some badly drawn dxf files can cause problems so what i did was draw the vanes in LT2011 using the clipping command so everything should be joined , i then tried filleting every intersection and when that didn,t work i exploded the drawing just for the hell of it , still no joy. Help please!