Lets stop kidding ourselves.

People looking for help with Lazycam... you don't wanna hear this, but give up. You're wasting your time.

As a programmer of over 30 years, specializing in user interfaces, I have to conclude that Lazycam IS A PIECE OF CRAP.

I have been screwin' with it for WEEKS and I can not generate the same Gcodes twice, using the same DXF and the same settings. Its almost random in the way it places unwanted leadins everywhere. It ignores the tool setting (usually) and writing depth information to all layers seems to work, based on the phase of the moon or some other cosmic event. Of course Ive reinstalled it several times.

My top issue is that I can't do even simple plunge cutting to route a part. WHAT PART OF ALL LEADS OFF does this dungware not understand?

I'll be buying SheetCam... unless someone knows of a cheep (free) DXF to Gcode generator that actually works.

Thank you for the rant. This is my qualified professional opinion and not necessarily that of CNCZone.

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Originally Posted by garym1957

As a programmer of over 30 years, specializing in user interfaces, I have to conclude that Lazycam IS A PIECE OF CRAP.

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I agree with you 100%. I'd never recommend it to anyone. For one, it was never finished. And it has a terrible user interface.

While there may not be cheaper options, there are many better options.

I fully agree it would not be the tool of choice, especially compared to many of the commercial packages around, but starting out, once I got used to it, I found it very useful for the PCB routing I was doing, and used it extensively for quite some time with very good results. As all cuts were single depth, and and single pass, it didn't matter about the dodgy tool depth setting, or lead-ins. When I had a multi pass job I just did a "find and replace" in notepad for the depth value and loaded the gcode files separately! :p

The price was right, and it did the job just fine for me at the time, I wouldn't consider using it at all now for most, if not all, work, but everything has it's place and I'm sure that for simple tasks such as what I was using it for it would be just fine for others starting out too. Is there another free one around that's better than Lazycam?

It is a shame they didn't develop it just that further, would have been a very handy tool then.

cheers,
Ian

I wish I knew enough about the innards of the controllers and math behind the I-J stuff. I would dare someone to open source a LazyCam replacment. My contribution would be the core programming for the precision timers, user interfaces and XML parsing.

Hey... Maybe this could actually happen. If you know anything about Windows programming and especially how G-code gets created from DXF, drop me a note. In fact I think there is something in the creative Commons like a library of functions for just that purpose. I'll have a look.

Speaking of open source, I just made up that word "dungware", in my earlier post. I'm quite proud of myself so I am releasing this new and useful word to all of you, my good friends in the Public Domain. Use it freely, but use it wisely.

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Originally Posted by garym1957

I wish I knew enough about the innards of the controllers and math behind the I-J stuff. I would dare someone to open source a LazyCam replacment. My contribution would be the core programming for the precision timers............

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There are no precision timers in LazyCAM. Or do you want to write a Mach3 replacement??


The IJ stuff is trivial, and compared to writing a cnc controller, so is getting g-code from a .dxf. You can download the .dxf specs from Autodesk.

I'm not much of a programer, and I wrote an AutoCAD VBA macro to create my g-code from within AutoCAD.

I might be able to answer some .dxf questions if you have any.

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Originally Posted by ger21

There are no precision timers in LazyCAM. Or do you want to write a Mach3 replacement??

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I'm having more brain farts than Governor Rick Perry these days. Of course.... LazyCam is a data parser/convertor. No RTOS stuff at all. You might be hearing back from me about that.

Also, the the fellow named Arrggh... You can actually do FLAT PCB cutting with LazyCam? How many live chickens did you have to sacrafice before you could make a simple flat cut? Regardless of what I do, it always - ALWAYS introduces blended Z leadins where they aren't wanted or needed. How did you turn that crap off?

And I agree, Notepad is perfect for stepping down z-depths between passes. I had no choice but to use that on a simple sign routing job I just did. Thats far easier than removing the leadins by hand, when your G code is several hundred lines long.

I used LazyCam quite a bit when I first got into CNC. I have found it to be a pretty decent program for engraving and (non precision) cutting out of pieces, and still use it.

Don't know about turning off lead-ins, but is it possible that it's something we didn't turn on? Maybe that's why we're not seeing it.

I for one am glad it was included free with Mach3, and hope they continue to offer it. I have ridden that puppy like a rented mountain bike.

The day I gave up on Lazycam Pro, and bought Cut2D was like the day my router table first spun it's screws. Back then they promised future development if you went "pro" ($). It has too many bugs that, for me, made starting from the beggining a standard operation. It made me curse a lot and was an uninspiring element in the drawing to product process.

If my time really was money, why I'd......

Cut2D is the bees knees you cant beat it for ease of operation and cost

I use Cut2D as well. I like it quite a lot. However, there are two things that LazyCam does pretty well.

Supports tool changes. I get the workarounds for Cut2D and all that, but REALLY?

Cut2D absolutely chokes on my big graphic dxf files that LazyCam handles without issue. I haven't had the time to troubleshoot why that is, but since I use both, I have options.

Different arrows in the quiver.

I just wasted my weekend with LazyCam. It worked OK for what I was doing. It never recognized tool diameter so I drew my designs with this in mind. Now it changes circles into about 20 lines of code with x and y coords instead of using the i and j notation. I don't think I accidentally changed anything in it. Why would it just start doing this all of a sudden? Now all of my screw holes are off.

I have a copy of MasterCam on my design computer. Anyone know how to get it off there and load it onto my machine computer?

Thanks,

WM

You might look at CAMBAM. There're free, demo and full versions available. It worked for the simple stuff I was playing with last year. I bought a license and iirc it was quite reasonable.

Cheers,
Jerry

Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk

Very interesting post. I was curious about this software , but does it not come with the Mach software free ? I do not own any of it yet but I do like the look of the Mach software .

The free version included with Mach3 is limited in features. The "Pro" version has additional features, and is $75 I think.

Mach3 is awesome. It has given common people access to professional quality machining. Lazycam is provided on the disc with Mach3 as "crippleware". It has some features removed so you'll buy the licensed version. Screw that. I have wasted too many hours trying to get it to do what it was supposed to be capable of instead of cutting parts. Huge waste of time, which I was happy to delete from my computer.

Spend your money on CamBam. I know it sounds cheeky.... like somebody's kid named it, but it really is very good. It even has some drawing primitives... for those modifications or extra drill holes you forgot to add in your original drawing.

Like the big boys, it supports tool changes and fancy IJ moves. It produces pretty tight GCode - which means fewer moves - wasting less machine hours - using less energy - sparing cutting tool life - shall I go on? In fact I have designed non-trivial geometries using ONLY CamBam.

SheetCam is another nice DXF to GCode program. Its more money and appears to be geared for a different crowd than the small shop/Hobby shoppers.

I've been getting great results from Cut2D (made by Vectric). It will post to Mach3 no problem. Probably similar to CamBam and similar in price. If you are just cutting out parts and drilling holes these programs would be fine.

VCarvePro is another one that is made by Vectric that is a little more advanced for industrial applications.

For $150 you save yourself the agony of dealing with LazyCam. I wasted many shop hours trying to figure it out. I downloaded it and starting using it right away. I didn't read the manual as it is made as simple as possible for the hobby user.

Good Luck,

WM

Lazy cam works very well whe you make a crap load of layers in auto cad. I do very accurate work with it all the time.

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Originally Posted by speedtwin69

Lazy cam works very well whe you make a crap load of layers in auto cad. I do very accurate work with it all the time.

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It seems to work okay for me, too.

Although I think they should offer full versions of LazyCam to owners of Mach3, or at least charge less than $75. I'd like to have access to pocketing and offsets but $75 is a lot of money for a hobby guy, if they aren't going to enhance it any further.

LazyCAM is very good for making PCBs from DXF files.
It's a tool: you jut have to learn how to use it.

Cheers
Roger