Topics

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Related Softwares / Mach3 - sorry i have no one else to ask

« on: March 10, 2022, 00:41:08 am »

my X/P machine that runs my cnc died, appears the motherboard quit.  i have another x/p machine to replace it, but the Mach3 loaded on it doesn't have the custom screen and zero cutter height subroutine i wrote.  i was able to copy all the Mach3 files from the broken machine to the working one.  will i have to reload the software or is copying it enough, or should i just try to update the existing software to use the custom screen?  i did all of this so long ago that i forget how things work.

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Related Softwares / I used to be smarter - help with macros in mach3

« on: November 26, 2020, 19:33:13 pm »

i have a custom primary panel for mach3 that has a much larger screen for instance, and i wrote an auto zero routine and button.  i have been using it for years.  well, i discovered a mistake involving imperial and metric modes, and the very last command that can possibly drive the bit thru my gauge block.  oops.  i found and corrected my macro, but forget how to update my custom screen.  in 1970's programmer language, if i even remember that correctly, I need a link and load type of step I think.  maybe something with VBA?  it's all foggy and hard to look up.  i am using X/P offline on my cnc router.

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Members Projects / one-off mold for dust boot

« on: November 07, 2020, 20:58:09 pm »

when plans to 3D print this fell thru i decided to try a one-off, quick and dirty method from fiberglass.  spent little time sanding the mold halves, then coated them with a coat of resin.  two coats of floor paste wax, and laid them up wet.  they actually came out of the mold fairly easily without a lot of damage, not that i need to reuse them.  i will cut a 80mm plug for the router hole and a 4" plug for the vac hole and glass the pieces together, then likely build up the thickness some more.  there are several layers of bias glass right now.  small scraps actually laid up the nicest.  this boot wont win any beauty contests, but that isnt a goal.  i dont even know if it will work as planned.  the traditional boot loses all vacuum when the boot is only partially over the material being milled.  i don't know if i've choked the air flow down too much.  we'll see.  not that much invested in this so far, other than time relearning fusion360 after several years off.  the 3D version was much more complex with cam straps and brush holder flanges and such.  if others have tried this or similar method i'd love to hear what your experience was.

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CamBam help (General usage) / doesn't recognize .STL file

« on: October 31, 2020, 17:51:32 pm »

i designed a dust boot mold using fusion360 and exported the geometry as a .STL file.  the file exists, like 300K, but Cambam doesn't see it when i attempt to open it, even when specifying *.stl.  No ideas as to what else to try.  I am limited with the free version of fusion now.  i have created .TAP files which work like .NC files, and made them run my machine.  i still prefer the simple parallel machining of cambam and have yet to figure out how to make the complex fusion ops do the equivalent.
originally i was going to 3D print this at school, but the fancy, donated printer isnt working and no budget to get it repaired, so my idea is to mill a mold from foam and make 2 fiberglass halves.  not like it needs to be some gorgeous part, altho the renderings are fun to look at.

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Members Projects / my favorite hold downs for wood projects

« on: October 29, 2020, 18:55:42 pm »

after many iterations i found these work best for me and tend not to break if overtightened.  the screws are 2" and you can see i just screw them directly into the spoilboard and sand down the warts it leaves afterwards.  the hole is located such that the dowel is captured.  the fit is tight so as to add to the strength [which was much compromised by drilling that hole].  use a high quality 13 ply birch plywood, other stuff will split.  dowel is 1/2".
drill the dowel first, ideally perpendicular to the grain, locate in hold down, center hole and drill thru hold down, rotate drill a bit to form a bit of a slot.  insert screw, cut off dowel flush with bandsaw.
  cut "beak" notch also on the bandsaw making the cut slightly acute.  don't use drywall screws, the bugle head splits the wood.  hold downs can also be used, as shown, just resting on top of the material.

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Members Machines / quick change for hobbiest?

« on: October 28, 2020, 00:01:09 am »

i am not doing production work but do tire of changing bits, re-zeroing, and all.  i have R8 collets on a water cooled 5kw(?) motor.  what options are available for simple manual bit changing?  are there adapters, or did i buy the wrong style of motor?  i work almost exclusively with plywood.  do i lose available Z axis travel with adapters?  my CRP4848 has 6" currently.

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Members Projects / flat stack end table

« on: October 27, 2020, 23:44:45 pm »

uses 2' x 4' of 3/4 birch.  this is just a prototype from radiata pine ply.  inspired by a mid-century modern credenza we have.  likely paint the arched legs to accentuate the curves.

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CamBam help (General usage) / using SIDE PROFILE

« on: October 27, 2020, 18:52:46 pm »

after getting odd results i finally figured out what is going on with the geometry.  having been a carpenter and built many flights of stairs greatly helped.  in this example i used real life 3/4" plywood, which actually measures .71" thick.  I was wanting in this example to cut a slot an inch wide with a 45° tapered side profile.  the 45° line shown is the desired shape.  using rough steps illustrates better what happens with the "stair steps" that are actually milled.  the geometry is such that the "stairs" will always be built on top of the sloped line, never cut any material below it, which is desired.  so the "stairs" start at the bottom with a "riser" the height you specify.  the next "tread" will be whatever the distance horizontally over to the sloped line.  this repeats up thru to the top height of the material.  so even if the "risers" incrementally match the material thickness, say it was .75" and we stepped .25", the top of the material will always have a "tread", or a portion of a tread on the top, which of course makes the slot thickness measure smaller than what was desired.  the geometry for the side profile is measured thru where the "risers" touch the inside of the tread, like where your toe would hit when standing on a tread.  this all makes sense now, but i found no detailed explanation anywhere.  even the VALUE parameter doesn't specifically say that unit is in degrees from vertical [it is].  if you compute what that top "tread" measurement is, you can add a negative ROUGHING CLEARANCE value and force the "stairs" to be cut below the sloped line.

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Members Projects / greenland kayak paddle

« on: October 04, 2017, 19:52:51 pm »

cut from a 2x6 western red cedar.  weighs 29oz.  I made a hollow one, but only saved 9oz, hardly worth the significantly more effort.  swing weight is nearly the same.  takes 4 milling sessions, about 40min each, since it is too long for my 48" table.

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CamBam help (General usage) / optimizing 3-D surface milling

« on: September 30, 2017, 22:18:15 pm »

i am sitting here watching my machine carve a canoe paddle from a 3-D model.  using the HORIZONTAL technique i observe a lot of "cutting air" while it travels to the far end and back.  it seems to me that a lot of motion could be eliminated simply by looking ahead and deleting all the code until the Z-axis plunges down to the current depth being cut.  i'm sure i'm not the first to observe or ask about this.  are there optimizing routines that the G-code can be run thru?

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Related Softwares / DraftSight2017

« on: March 03, 2017, 20:47:50 pm »

I will ask here because I can't seem to log into any of the draftsight forums or support anymore.  it appears that draftsight launched the 2017 version on march 1st and my prior version no longer works.  I am guessing some other cambam users also use draftsight?  is it true that the free version no longer supports TRIM, EXTEND, and SPLINE ?  plus whatever else I've yet to discover missing.  I feel like paul ryan has gotten hold of it.  of course the $100/yr PRO version is avail.  it was my understanding that Dassault was required by the courts to offer this free version after stealing autocad design.  this is frustrating.

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CamBam help (General usage) / woodgrain background?

« on: March 01, 2017, 20:27:02 pm »

I have a friend who wants a sign made for his BBQ restaurant.  the sign will be exposed to some harsh weather, so I suggested using a UHD plastic like Corafoam.  He wants a wood, rustic look however.  I wondered if cambam has any plugins or tricks to carve random woodgrain into the background.  I don't want to buy more software, since this is a one-time thing.  the sign will be 41x66" so I will have to carve half at a time since my bed is only 4x4'.

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CamBam help (General usage) / zoom wheel direction

« on: February 01, 2017, 06:10:13 am »

is there a way to reverse the direction of the zoom wheel within CAMBAM?  it is the opposite of all my other software.  seems more intuitive to me that when you scroll the wheel away from you that the geometry also zooms away.  currently with my cambam the opposite is true.

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Members Projects / dust boot revision

« on: January 31, 2017, 21:15:32 pm »

in a prior life I was a programmer at McDonnell-douglas.  at the time they had the most sophisticated CAD system in existence.  the computer room could cover 2 football fields.  I remember writing programs involving parametric cubic patches, which defined the geometry of say where the wing blended into the fuselage.  it involved 4x4 matrix algebra, which, if you remember, does a lot of rows times columns and then diagonals times diagonals etc....  add to that the fact that fortran stores rows as columns in memory.  oh yeah, all double precision, 16 digit math.  so easy to make mistakes.  needless to say I am blown away at how my desktop computer running fusion 360, free software, can instantly compute lofting, intersections of solid bodies and on and on.  in the 1980's Mc-D mostly used wire frame modeling because it was faster and easy to look thru.  solid modelling was just starting to become feasible, but bogged the computers down with computations. just wanted to share some screen shots of a dust boot I hope to 3D print.   I love viewing the cuts where bodies intersect.  imagine how difficult and expensive this would be to conventionally machine.

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Members Projects / walking on the dark side - 3D printing a dust boot

« on: January 28, 2017, 06:34:34 am »

how hard could it be?  with that naivety I once built an airplane, an RV6A [an most of an RV8].  so I have spent most of this week learning fusion 360 with the idea of printing a complex-shaped dust boot.  still need to add a tab and slot to the top collar so I can tighten it to the spindle.  lofting that elbow was hair pulling.  then once you have it's rules satisfied [still don't totally understand the projected geometry thing very well] it's just click, click.  the other mind bending aspect is joining and cutting 3D bodies.  took me a while to figure out how to blend the oval portion into the cylindrical body part.   have to admit not worrying about endmills and degrees of freedom is pretty cool.  the community college has some expensive printers I hope to use.