I have an issue with juddering and shaking on my CNC router when cutting curves. I have been informed that it may be a DXF issue when the CAM software converts to G code. The majority of my drawings are done on 3D cad which are saved as drawings which are then converted to DXF. I was saving as R12 format which may or may not be the problem. Has anyone else encountered this and been successful in smoothing things out by changing to a different file version of DXF?

Thanks

Try Ver14 or above. The early version saved a lot of curves as segmented short lines instead of arcs. Too much of this makes Mach3 sound like a woodpecker instead of running smoother arcs.

(;-) TP

Your problem is probably more to do with your software converting 3d data to 2d "Splines". Not sure of your process or software, but if you list the entities in the cad software before export as dxf - Avoid "Splines" - Use Lines, Arcs, Polylines (Lwpolylines) etc. Your Dxf and resultant Gcode files should also be smaller.
(I assume that because your cam program happy with spline, also happy with polylines. Some only accept lines/arcs)

If it helps, the process I use is
1) generate the drawing from the 3d model in the 3d modelling software.
2) delete all extraneous entities in a 2d cad program, and list / convert entities as required. try to avoid splines (solidworks often creates splines from section views), as you generally need to trace over them to get something usable.
3) your resultant export as dxf should be good now in all versions of dxf (depending on cam setup).

I hope this helps