[mbam]

I am having a heck of a time with V24, my Camsoft control and G2, G3. I have a request in for a post but my customer is screaming as I am way late on this job. Maybe I can get this solved with some help here. I do have this posted over in the Camsoft forum also.

The last program I did with Bobcad for this machine was in V19 and it worked at that time.

At certain parts of the program the tool will make an unintended 180 deg arc or complete circle.

I have tried the 3 settings in Camsoft for the Fanuc arcs along with the corresponding changes in the post with no success.

[aldepoalo]

Breaking up arc movements.

221. Break arcs into quadrants? y

223. Break arcs into two pieces if greater than 180 degrees? y

By setting both these blocks in your post to yes it will post arc movements at every 90 So if you had a full arc 0-360 it would be posted in 4 blocks of code.

This should resolve the issue you are having with the camsoft controller and reading arc movements.

[mbam]

Al, I just tried that. Here are my settings

Camsoft - fanuc arcs = 1 (incremental)

221. Break arcs into quadrants? y
222. Arc center a=absolute, b=incremental, d=unsigned inc., e=radius? b
223. Break arcs into two pieces if greater than 180 degrees? y

No joy

[aldepoalo]

Ok,

Are you cutting a simple shape or is it a complex curve?

What is the name of the post you are using and where did you get it?

What other options does camsoft have for your arc settings?

[mbam]

It is an engraving job, lots and lots of little moves.

Camsoft does not have anything else I can think of for arcs, just absolute, incremental or R value.

This pic is from an earlier test, now it is making little circles.

[jrmach]

Yeah,this happens.The only way I have found to deal with this is to Back Plot the engraving and where it screws up,zoom in and Explode the area in question.The downside is your going to have a lot of little segments where you Explode.That works for me.Also make sure all of Engraving is on same plane.That can also give undesired results.Also make sure you do not have any double entity's.Run the Re-Organize under Utilities.And I might add,do not explode more than you need to.A totally Exploded Engraving will look not so good either.

[aldepoalo]

It's bad geometry... What's bad geometry? Well there are lots of answer for that, but the one you care about right now is you have very tiny little line and arc segments that make up your 2D engraving geometry. My guess is you used corell draw to do the vectorization.

Anyway, you need to clean up the geometry to make things work right.

1) when you select the geometry to engrave does it chain select?

2) Have you tried using

Utilities>Reorganize > Cleanup and optimize

I may be wrong but my money is on it being a geometry issue. If you can clean up or simply your geometry the problem will go away.

You are dealing with a short arc tolerance, where the arc segment starts and finishes in such a small amount the controller reads it at as a full arc.

So clean up or simply your arcs ( making them larger pieces of arcs vs small little tiny ones )

or

Convert all you arcs into line segments.

Using Utilities > Explode > Arcs

This will break all your arcs into line segments. This way you do not need to worry about the arcs at all because you'll be cutting line segments.

Anyway I hope this information helps you.

[jrmach]

If you still are having problems after the suggestions above,zip a .bbcd file of your engraving on the forum and I or somebody can take a look.Unfortunately I have dealt with this alot before.And not always BoBs fault.Al is right,usually a geometry issue.This happens in engraving,even BoBCADs book of 6000 cliparts,there are issues with them.

[The Engine Guy]

mbam

"Crop Circles", so called because no one knows where they come from

I have had this happen to me on a numerous occasions over the years with both BobCAD-CAM and other much more expensive softwares and apart from what has already been suggested here is what I have found is usually the problem.

It happens when the tool is asked to go to a specific coordinate by way of an arc but according to the geometry the arc is either too small or the tool is too big and won`t fit through what the software "sees" as the gap the tool should go through and it obeys the command to get to the point by going "the long way round" for want of a better expression.

I`ve usually just changed the tool diameter on most but on the odd occasion where that wasn`t a viable option I have very slightly altered the geometry to in effect "allow the tool to pass"
Quite often a look at the "stepover" amount and reducing that will clear it as well and that is the easiest/best option

So far I`ve not had to use any other method to rectify this issue, worth a try

Regards

[Toolbit]

Change line 222 from b to E for radius don't use small e for radius. If you still get crop circles change line 221 & 223 small y's to captial Y's. I don't why today I was setting up my post for ver 25 and it would not work until I changed to a big E. I then checked my post on version 23 and it was a big E.

May be worth a try.

Toolbit

[mbam]

Well, here is what I have found. I used some of the utilties in Corel Draw to clean up the logo, then saved it as a PDF. Then imported the PDF into Bobcad, cleaned and optimized.

I then created 2 programs using the respective posts, one for my Fadal with a CNC88 and one for the Camsoft.

The Fadal runs it fine, same issues with the Camsoft. I'm going to compare them line by line. They should be essentialy the same, yes?

I know, why don't I just used the Fadal? The material is really too big to fit the machine without taking the ends panels off, even though it looks like I will do that. And I just spent a week mounting a 24,000 RPM spindle on my Bridgeport so I could do this job.

[mbam]

Also, 1) when you select the geometry to engrave does it chain select?

Yes -it does now, it did not before.

[aldepoalo]

I though you were working with corell.... It's a great program for converting images, it does a really accurate job of it. The down side is that geometry created has lots of segments and most overlap or are not connected. It's the trade off you have for getting a very accurate representation of your image. Because you are engraving and the part looks small converting the arc segments over to lines I do not think will compromise how the engraving looks...

At this point have you been able to cut the part correctly?

[mbam]

Al, I still cannot cut the part with the Camsoft machine.

I am going to try exploding the arcs next.

I guess I will have to figure a way to get the workpiece in my Fadal if that does not work.

[aldepoalo]

work case send me the file and I'll fix it for you so it works....

[aldepoalo]

Ok I've sent the file back. All I did was explode the arcs to line segments. It will be a longer program but you will not have any arc movements therefore you won't have any issue with the "crop circles "

[mbam]

Turns out this was a problem with Camsoft. There was something fubar in the configuration file. After redoing the config all versions of the file from Bobcad now run fine.

Thanks for helping me figure this out!