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Author Topic: Chains and entities question  (Read 25281 times)

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Offline docltf

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #20 on: September 04, 2009, 04:35:10 AM »
Hi Steve

you aint dead yet, here is another pile of crap. heheheh!
you said you are going to use a .016 cutter ,so i guess the real number is .015625 . at 16 to 1 that moves up to .250 . the l-cam i gave you was allready pumped up 16 t0 1 ,your orignal dxf imported showed X as 1.950 ,bumped to 16 to 1 made X 31.200 .
the first thing i do after loading a file into l-cam is to turn leds off then turn the rapids off before doing anything. maybe that might be causing you a little snag. those two items mess the chains real bad.you dont need them until the end.
i made two g-codes for you that cut .016 deep so if you want to try to run them make sure to edit the feed and speeds.these  tool paths are both generated off the l-cam file i gave you set at 16 to 1 or 31.200 scale. air-poc1 after pocket path generation
was scaled back to 1.950 then you delete all layers except the pocket. then optimize, then i moved origin to center.you do origin the way you want. selected tool for the layer then posted code.this code works with mach3 X&Y scale set 1.000 .
air-poc2 was generated 31.200 and not scaled down. before loading into mach3 set scale X&Y to .0625 wich is 1 to 16 .when you check both files toolpath after loading you will see they are the same. this just shows differant ways to do the same thing.

keep in touch were all pulling for you.
bill
Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #21 on: September 04, 2009, 04:24:10 PM »
you aint dead yet, here is another pile of crap. heheheh!

The first thing i do after loading a file into l-cam is to turn leds off then turn the rapids off before doing anything. maybe that might be causing you a little snag.

keep in touch were all pulling for you.
bill

I am going to try to do what you described here. I never would have figured out this type of stuff. This is exactly what i need in the way of helping me and not doing it for me. I really appreciate your patiance and if i ever figure this stuff out, I will pay it forward for sure!!

Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #22 on: September 04, 2009, 10:57:56 PM »
Are you guy's sure your not screwing with the new guy!  hhahahahh!

First of all i used the DOC's file to get the part ready to cut. Everything went perfect and was very easy to do.

I spent hours trying to replicate what was done and   IM A FAILURE!! I cannot figure out what is different between the Doc's and mine. Here is what i tried. What did I miss? Is there something in the setup that i need to change? Why does it work on doc's computer and not mine?

Load AirCleaner4Test.DXF
Turn Rapids off
Turn Leads off
Move Chain#0 to new layer #3
Move Chain#2 to new layer #4
Move Chain#4 to layer#4
Move Chain#1 to new layer#5
Select layer#5
Click pocket tab
Click spiral, ccw, in-out, left
Click tool, 1/4, step 40, finish .048
Click create islands
click create pocket
Failure
Move layer #5 under layer Visible
click chain#11
click pocket
Failure

Offline docltf

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #23 on: September 05, 2009, 12:09:40 AM »
Hi Steve
here is a pic of my loading setup. this pretty much gets most of my stuff.
this is going to be a step by step of what i did to your dxf to make that l-cam file.
1.import file
2.turn off leads
3.turn off rapids
4.scale to check for X dimension , i wright down 1.950,close scale,make sure origin stays lower left
5.leave large outside chain in original layer,move second largest oval chain to next new layer
6.move big curly chain to next new layer
7.move top small chain to next new layer
8.move bottom small chain to same layer as top small chain
9.open scale and set X to 31.200 wich is 16 to 1
10.after scaling highlight each layer to make sure they are still where you put them
11.open scale again and make sure it set to 31.200, if it did not repeat steps 9,10,11
12.hit optomize once
13.highlight each chain and move lead arrows to middle of the flatest and longest line
14.check each chain and make sure your leads did not move
15.hit optomize again
16.save as your master l-cam
17.close l-cam
18.restart l-cam and load you l-cam file turn off leads and rapids. you should be ready to go.



bill


Offline RICH

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #24 on: September 05, 2009, 07:47:53 AM »
Just a comment Steve,
I guess it all depends on how you want to use LC and how you work. You can do all that doctf has shown, but,
for a newbie it is just not the way to go about it in my opinion. LC is a dxf importer and produces gcode based on the machining operations you want to do. LC is not a CAD program ( this is noted over 10 times in the manual).
Folks need to understand, that they need to think about all the different machining operations that will be done.
Then you can focus on defining cutting parameters to those different machining operations. Otherwise you may spend "hours" trying to manipulate chains or entities, tricking LC, or whatever, and even then, when it comes time to post you may not be able to get the operation's in the order you want to do them. Even selection of them can become a bear because of naming. Take a hard look at the manual.

Your air cleaner took around 35 minutes to draw and i was able to do all maching operations required for the piece.
This included redundant machine operations IE; after the horizontal lines where machined i would probably need to due another profile cut to remove some machining marks left by the cutter to clean things up. Very easily done by just adjusting cut depth by a few thou's.

In the end, you will have more success at getting the particular pathing more quickly,  and not trying to do layout with LC which it really is not meant to
Have fun.... just a suggestion,
RICH 

Offline RICH

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #25 on: September 05, 2009, 07:59:39 AM »
A few other comments,
I also leave the lead's and rapids turned off. LC will default all rapids to a z clear plane of 1 unit.
Lead's are added as required when appropriate. The rapids only make the viewing difficult.
I will usualy look at the rapids prior to posting the code to see that they are acceptable ( which will be the case
the majority of times ). And also always look for a rapid move that mmay cut thru the materail because of an X/y/z combination move as LC will sometimes do this and you need to modify the code so z is first before moving in the X or Y. When you change the machining order the rapids are changed.
RICH
Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #26 on: September 05, 2009, 08:52:52 AM »
LC is a dxf importer and produces gcode based on the machining operations you want to do. LC is not a CAD program ( this is noted over 10 times in the manual).

Hello RICH

I'm not sure what you think i did or am trying to do but i can offer this.

The part was drawn in Alibre V11. A drawing of the part was made and then it was exported as a Autocad V14 file as a DXF. I'm not trying to modify the part in any way, i just want to cut the part out as drawn.

Offline RICH

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #27 on: September 05, 2009, 09:36:30 AM »
Ok, so split the drawing into machining operations by putting them on associated layers like i did with the dxf
i posted. then all should be very easy and quick as all you need to do is define the cutting parameters to the correct layer.
RICH

Offline budman68

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #28 on: September 05, 2009, 09:43:42 AM »
LC is a dxf importer and produces gcode based on the machining operations you want to do. LC is not a CAD program ( this is noted over 10 times in the manual).

Hello RICH

I'm not sure what you think i did or am trying to do but i can offer this.

The part was drawn in Alibre V11. A drawing of the part was made and then it was exported as a Autocad V14 file as a DXF. I'm not trying to modify the part in any way, i just want to cut the part out as drawn.

Steve,

If you have the option of saving in AutoCAD 11/12 ASCII dxfformat, try that instead of Autocad V14, as that "mostly" worked for me with LCam.

Dave
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Just because I'm a Global Moderator, don't assume that I know anything !

Dave->    ;)

Offline docltf

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Re: Chains and entities question
« Reply #29 on: September 05, 2009, 10:24:04 AM »
steve

what budman said is good .  v12 basically used here. my example was how i managed your drawing. l-cam does not like arcs on small parts. try drawing on many layers and scaled up, this helps.
avoid using offsets on pockets if you can, it might generate oversize code. l-cam has a lot of power ,but it does goofy stuff. when you draw big to go small it helps alot. it saves on crop circles too.
lately i have got in the habit of big drawing and using the scale feature of mach3 wich works really good.

bill