Messages

1

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LC never produces valid GCode

« on: July 23, 2011, 05:38:13 PM »

Thanks Rich,

with your dxf I'm able to reproduce at least 2 passes. I've choosen a tool with 3mm dia and the rest as in your screenshot. My depth per pass is 1 and my cut depth is -10. The result is two passes but should be 10. Perhaps it has to do with the rapid height which is 5 in my setup. Every change in those parameters does not lead to different results.

Just to mention it: my material is 60 by 60 by 10 mm. The Z0 is on top of the material surface. The tool is 3mm and has to go 10mm deep (to Z-10). As it can go 0,25mm per pass, it should need 40 passes.

Now I had about 40 tries but none of it produced g-code with more than 2 passes. I give up on that point.

Another issue is with my dxf. As already mentioned it comes out of TurboCAD 5 Mac and it is in some unknown way different than Rich's dxf. Don't know why. Even if I put the lines and the circles in different layers - after it was in LC, only one circle appears in Mach3. The others are all missing.

@RICH: I realized the red lines in Z direction - do they have a special purpose or are those only helpers?

@Tweakie: There should be no difference. See above. Thanks for the hint - I insert the G42 manually.

Ok, that's enough for now and my spare time is used up. Thanks everybody for helping. I'll be trying LC when it got out of beta. I've just learned g-code and will do this with Notepad.

Thanks
Hoagie

2

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LC never produces valid GCode

« on: July 20, 2011, 03:43:29 PM »

Hi Tweakie,

your help is very appreciated, thanks!

Please have a look at my file from try #14 in the attachement. Any readers are welcome to have a look, too. I have no idea why your file and mine are so different. My one even has a G42 command as you suggested, but every try has only one path in one depth - ArtSoft, that's not funny. :-((

My last chance is to ask someone here on the forum to convert the file for me with unknown results. (I try to avoid asking you again, Tweakie. You helped a lot already.)
I'm not sure, but it might be a sign to start learning g-code now...

Regards
Hoagie

3

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LC never produces valid GCode

« on: July 20, 2011, 04:31:03 AM »

Hi Tweakie,

thanks for looking at it. Your file is in fact better than my tries. Can we compare our steps please?
1. right after starting LC, load the DXF via the file menu/open command
2. click on CLEAR and OPTIMIZE
3. rearrange the groups so that both half circles are cut in order of the outer shape
4. select the layer and choose a tool - set all layers
5. select the layer again and set the cut depth to -10 - set all layers
6. post gcode
Is this approximately what you did?

One other thing comes into mind: if it cuts exactly on the blue lines with a 3mm tool, the result will be 3mm too small in x and y, right? Would one use offsetting in that case?

Thanks
Hoagie

4

LazyCam (Beta) / LC never produces valid GCode

« on: July 18, 2011, 04:39:09 PM »

Hello there,

I just followed both tutorials for Lazycam and tried to reproduce the simple foam examples but my version does not create the gcode like in the video. I load LC and the AFoamTest2.dxf. Then pick my tool (3mm 2cut) which is able to cut 1 mm per pass. Then set the depth to -3 units and SetAllLayers. Chain#2 is missing in the resulting gcode.

Another example: I draw a simple 2D figure in TurboCAD MAC 5 and export it as DXF R12. The depth setting of -10 goes away every time I switch to the layer tab. The resulting gcode has only one single pass and no depth. I attached the DXF for review.

LC is version 3.00, Mach3 is 3.042.40. I'm a paying customer.
Thanks for any suggestion.

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Howto use Roadrunner example in metric units?

« on: July 03, 2011, 07:48:49 AM »

Hi Hood,

G20 fixed it and Roadrunner has been milled successfully.
Thank you very much!

Hoagie

6

General Mach Discussion / Howto use Roadrunner example in metric units?

« on: July 03, 2011, 04:19:31 AM »

Hi all,

on my recently build mill, the roadrunner example seems to be smaller than 1 by 1 mm. You can hear the movement, but not see it. Is there anything I can do to use this file as my first test?

Thanks
Hoagie