[CarveOne]

We won't be able to see how flat it is in a picture...;-)

Yeah, I know, but not even a fish-eye lens will make this stuff look straight.

I hope to have some pics posted in an hour or two. (Good or bad)

CarveOne

[MyCattMaxx]

(action) Maxx checks his clock. ;-)

[CarveOne]

(action) Maxx checks his clock. ;-)

Sorry, I had an interruption for an hour or so, then had a bewildering time with CamBam trying to get it to do a profile correctly. A former neighbor dropped by with a woodworking project that will pay for a new router bit, so I didn't complain too loudly about being too busy to mess with it.

CarveOne

[MyCattMaxx]

Money jobs are good to have.

I was looking at my Alliant knee mill. It will cost me a fortune to convert to CNC as I need ball screws to start with. For the lite duty CNC milling I want to do on it I am thinking of making a X-Y table to clamp down on the bed.

[CarveOne]

The first cut of the tank mount didn't go so well, though it was fun to watch. 100 IPM in yellow pine B-C grade plywood does interesting things when it goes 1/4" deep instead of the 1/8" deep it was supposed to cut at.

I nailed the 5/16" plywood to the waste board with little 5/8" wire nails to keep it flat. This stuff is brittle and breaks apart easily.

I edited the .TAP file in Notepad and changed the F100 to F20 and it did much better. I'll bump it up to F40 tomorrow. I was going to cut this in aircraft birch plywood but don't have anything large enough unless I butt glue some smaller pieces together tonight.

I was wrestling with a problem that I haven't figured out yet for a large part of the afternoon. The outline of the tank mount is defined as a profile and it is supposed to be cut with the .25" cutter on the outside of the line. Everything I try shows it being cut on the inside in the tool path, and that's what it does when I cut the part. The part outline is too small by the width of the cutter.

The pockets measure just 0.003" under size, but that is no issue with this part since they are just lightening holes. The holes are round with no wiggly edges when cutting at 20IPM. They are cut in two passes starting in the center and working outward. After sanding the fuzz off of the part it looks pretty good other than the wrong size profile cut.

I didn't find anything on the CamBam site that seemed related to this problem. I'm using the latest free beta version at present.

CarveOne

[MyCattMaxx]

Can't help you with cambam but a trick may be to code a tool change at that part of the operation and change the setting to double? the tool diameter. That may work as a quick ''fix'' till you get it sorted out.

Thanks for the pics. I always look forward to seeing somebody hacking up a perfectly good piece of material. ;-)

[CarveOne]

Can't help you with cambam but a trick may be to code a tool change at that part of the operation and change the setting to double? the tool diameter. That may work as a quick ''fix'' till you get it sorted out.

Thanks for the pics. I always look forward to seeing somebody hacking up a perfectly good piece of material. ;-)

What is happening is that the cutter is following the inside of the profile line, and making the bit larger or smaller won't help. The tool path in CamBam should be shown as a second line with a different color that is offset 1/4" outside of the profile line. I have seen it do this properly - but not today. I have regenerated the tool path numerous times while trying different settings and offsets. Even telling it to do an inside cut didn't change it. Weirdness.

CarveOne

[MyCattMaxx]

I meant to make the change in Mach3. Wouldn't changing the tool size there move over the cutting point?
I'm a noob so maybe my logic is flawed.

[ERJS2000]

In the MOP list that is on the left side of the screen after you select the profile operation, there is a tab labeled General. The second item in the list is InsideOutside. If you click on InsideOutside a little box will appear to the right of the column. Click on the box and a drop down list will appear with two choices, inside and outside. click on outside and regenerate the tool path and it should be on the outside.

[CarveOne]

I meant to make the change in Mach3. Wouldn't changing the tool size there move over the cutting point?
I'm a noob so maybe my logic is flawed.

Mach3 may be able to change it, don't know, but I would rather have it generated correctly from CamBam so I don't have to remember to change it later. The default setting in CamBam for a profile is "outside". There are some operations where you would want it to cut on the inside of a profile line and it has that option in the menu. This setting is supposed to offset the tool by 1/2 the tool diameter so that goes around the outside of the profile line. It just isn't doing that for me.

CarveOne

[CarveOne]

In the MOP list that is on the left side of the screen after you select the profile operation, there is a tab labeled General. The second item in the list is InsideOutside. If you click on InsideOutside a little box will appear to the right of the column. Click on the box and a drop down list will appear with two choices, inside and outside. click on outside and regenerate the tool path and it should be on the outside.

That's what I have been doing and it hasn't worked on the two computers that I have CamBam installed on. One is Win XP and the other is Vista Business edition. The perimeter line is a closed polyline.

CarveOne

[CarveOne]

I think I may have just hit on the answer to my problem. This part drawing was originally created in TurboCAD v12, with which I had issues trying to reliably close a polyline.

The end plate drawing that I recently did in TurboCAD v16 does not exhibit this problem at all. I can select outside or inside and regenerate the tool path and it does just what I expect it to.

I will load the tank mount file into TCAD v16 and trace it in another color. Then select the new polyline and copy it to a new file and close the original file. If this works, the inside/outside thing should start working properly in the new file. Will do it tomorrow morning.

CarveOne

[FandZ]

In cam bam you can choose inside or outside cut. When you hit 2.5profile it'll be under general portion on the left bottom side. Now, sometimes you hit outside but it does inside and visaversa. You just have to look at the green generated tool path. You also have to input the tool diameter or else it'll just cut on the line.

After you get all your settings and generated a tool path, right click on profile and click copy to mop. THen do it again and hit apply mop to templet or something like that. That way if you are doing multiple 2.5d profiles, you will not have to keep putting in all the settings.

I always changed the view inbetween different tool paths to zy or zx, can't remember now, to check the different tool path levels.

[FandZ]

I didn't see ERSJ's post. In cambam you can also explode the drawing. Then you can select all the edges individually. I think you hit ctlr or shift while clicking. I'm sure you'll get it though.

[CarveOne]

I have solved the mystery of the inside versus outside error and it was the "none of the above" choice on this test of will power versus software power.

Before I traced the polyline (as I mention last evening) I decided to zoom all the way in on each corner of the profile polyline to see if anything was amuck there. I did it at the lower right corner first and by sheer luck I found the problem right there. The polyline was closed, but there was a tiny projection to the right and another one downward at what looked like the corner. I did a node edit and rearranged the nodes inline and then deleted the extra nodes.

Now the profile polyline works correctly in CamBam whether it is told to make the tool path on the outside or the inside. Yippee!! Will try a cut when it warms up a little more.

CarveOne

[MyCattMaxx]

Good to hear.
Looking forward to new pics.

[CarveOne]

Here ya go, four more pics.

This cut turned out just right except that the pointed end needs to be stretched 1/8" longer in TurboCAD. I have the template we normally use to make these with at home this weekend to check that my CAD drawing is accurate relative to the template. The angle is ok. There are minor differences in the hole locations but that is not critical. I'll fix them anyway.

I bumped the X-Y feed rate to F40 and Z feed rate to F30 for this cut and it could go a bit higher on the X-Y without problems in this material. I'm using a regular 1/4" straight flute Woodcraft router bit.

CarveOne

[MyCattMaxx]

Great!! It's good to see you finally making chips.
It will be interesting to see how well it does on aluminum.

[CarveOne]

Ok MyCattMaxx, how's this?

This is going to be the cut file for the red oak gantry dress plates. It's just the outside part that is seen. It needs a mirrored version and the side that fits against the upright supports need bi-level pockets and round pockets for a couple of bolt heads. These will be an ongoing project for a while.

The 1/8" carbide router bit only has 3/8" cutting depth. One photo shows text that deep and the other two shows the machine making 1/4" deep text. I like the looks of the 3/8" deep text better.

The 1/8" router bit is too large to fully form the characters, and the text was cut away in the middle. I kinda like the effect though. I'll move the text downward in order to make it larger, but the points of the original font characters will not be sharp as they are when printed.

I made a 15 second Quicktime movie that I will upload to YouTube and then post the link here. Not today though, and no bluegrass music is included this time.

CarveOne

[jsantos]

Ok MyCattMaxx, how's this?
The 1/8" router bit is too large to fully form the characters, and the text was cut away in the middle. I kinda like the effect though. I'll move the text downward in order to make it larger, but the points of the original font characters will not be sharp as they are when printed.

CarveOne

A v-groover will cut very nice looking text.

It's always nice to see a machine come alive - like watching a baby born. :-)