Topics

1

Feature Requests / I wish CamBam had an autosave feature, instead of creating backup on each save

« on: January 15, 2019, 20:58:28 pm »

Hello guys, I haven't posted for a while, but today I decided to ask you guys something, as is the second time in a few years, when something is wrong with my UPS, and the PC turned off when the power was lost for a second or less, I will change the UPS anyway, but I never never used the .b1, .b2 or .b3 files that are generated when I save a cb file, I always delete them.

Isn't a better idea to have an option to autosave the file each x minutes ? I think this would be much more useful than the other backup feature that is already implemented (creating another file only when I manually save my project). I just lost a file I worked for more than an hour

Thank you.

2

CamBam help (General usage) / Projecting on surface advice / ideas

« on: July 12, 2018, 13:43:31 pm »

Hello guys,

do you know if I can project (the projection didn't work as expected), or more appropriate to bend the polylines along the selected surface ?

3

CamBam help (General usage) / There was an error reflecting type 'Matmill.mop_matmill'

« on: March 17, 2018, 19:46:44 pm »

Hello everyone,

After an ugly incident a few days ago I decided to get an PC in my workshop also, other than the one installed to control the CNC router, even if my office is just a door away, less than 10 meters away from my router, I still want to be as close as possible to my router, when making the CAM part for new articles in the same time while to router is milling something.

Today I installed the new PC, installed CamBam, copied the lic file and also copied the plugins I use on my other PC, the stick fonts, the STYLES and TOOL library XML, everything seems fine, I can open cambam and start new drawings, generate gcode, but I can't open files I saved from my other PCs, I get this error

Any idea what might be wrong ?

Thank you.

4

CamBam help (General usage) / 3D profile help needed - how reduce milling time

« on: December 07, 2017, 14:16:38 pm »

Hello guys,

can you tell me if there is any way to reduce the milling time on this roughing profile operation ? Is there a setting I can make , like on side profile, the ADJUST CUT WIDTH set to false, is something I'm looking for on this profile ... ohhhh   I did it with STEPOVER set to 2 .. )

And my next question is regarding the finish pass, is there other way to mill the finishing pass only in the right side, where the modeled is at an angle ? Should I draw like I did on my roughing operation, an region on the exterior and interior, to exclude the other area ?  Or there are other ways to do it? The finishing pass is milling on the top side, and I really want to get rid of that toolpath, I don;t want to mill the top side as is already flat, I'm milling TEGO board.

Thank you.

UPDATE. I attached the updated model, with the finishing operation also, but as you can see it will mill alot of air on the right side, can I avoid that ?

5

CamBam help (General usage) / Any ideea why this short toolpath was generated (profile MOP)

« on: November 22, 2017, 10:31:35 am »

Hello guys,

This morning I started working on a new brass emboss stamp and unfortunately I haven't noticed a small little toolpath segment that was generated erroneously, right in the middle of a letter, after the stamp was finished I noticed one letter is missing

Any ideea why that segment was generated, as it's not on the correct side of the polyline

PS. After that I also noticed that I forgot to flip the drawing, it's been about 2 years since I made this stupid mistake

6

CamBam help (General usage) / Weird issue with this pocket

« on: November 20, 2017, 13:53:11 pm »

Hello guys,

can you check this out and give me any advices on how to fix this pocket, I checked the poly-lines and all are closed, I also used REMOVE OVERLAPS but the pocket is still cutting the wrong area. It does the pocket correct  but it also generate a toolpath that seems to be offset from the corners.

Any help is appreciated !

Thank you.

7

CamBam help (General usage) / Is this a BUG? It's the second time when I open an DXF file containing an elipse

« on: November 07, 2017, 18:43:10 pm »

Hello everyone!

I have a new issue with cambam, and it happen twice in the last 7 days, it's the second time when I try to open an DXF file containing an ellipse, but cambam fails to draw it properly. I also tried to open the same DXF file in CorelDraw and Fusion360, both render the file just fine, only in Cambam the ellipse is huge, and not align correctly.

Also there is one more thing, that is happening since the beggining, when I first started to work with CamBam , but I got used to it and I didn;t cared about it, but now when I tried to open the same DXF file in multiple programs, I noticed that both programs rendered the drawings identically, only in cambam the shapes are all spaced away one to another, sometimes, it happens that the shapes are meters away from the origin, and the client said he is placing the shapes one next to the other, it's something about CamBam, I will also attach the original file I received from the client.

8

CamBam help (General usage) / Marking start and end point of MOP (not interested in setting the Start point)

« on: October 17, 2017, 06:46:06 am »

Hello,

I'm asking you guys if there is an option I did not seen or a plugin to show (with a different color eventually) the start point of an MOP and the end point, I know there is a direction yellow arrow, and also the option to add to any MOP a custom start point, but I'm not interested to set the start point for each MOP, only for the ones that have the end point quite far away from the next MOP start point.

It happen' many times that the router is ending making the screws holes in my raw material, and than move to the opposite side to start the exterior profile of the parts, even if close to the last hole, there is a profile that should be milled by the next MOP

The picture bellow is a model I'm working on now, but not the best example, first MOP,  drilling each part to secure it to the router table, I think it starts in the right-top side, but than, the next MOP is the exterior contour, I don't know where it starts, even if I see the direction arrow on each polyline, it would be great to see a • green dot where the MOP starts and a • red dot where it ends.

9

Feature Requests / Rest machining - for me, the "only" missing feature in CamBam!

« on: September 26, 2017, 06:58:10 am »

Hello everyone,

I don't remember if I talked to you guys about this feature, but now after a few months playing with Fusion 360 (I'm milling some steel small leather cutting dies) I think the Rest Machining feature is the most important one , that I really miss in CamBam. This feature it really saves a lot of time, time spent for doing CAM but also on actual machining time.

I would really pay easily $50 (or more) for an upgrade that would contain that feature, I'm really curious how many of you guys that payed for a licence years ago are willing to pay $50 or more for an important upgrade. I don't want to say that version 1 of cambam doesn't have many new features, I have both installed but still using the 9.8p version daily, I tried the v1 when a plugin didn't worked in the 0.98 version, I think dash lines plugin...

If the effort is really considerable, to implement REST MACHINING don't you guys think this would be the best way, for both parties: the developer / the consumer ?

Everyone, reading this topic, please reply  +1 if you are willing to pay (again) for this feature. I'm not the developer, but if I was, I would consider this option as the revenue will be much higher than just "waiting" for the daily sells to support the new updates.

PS. There is no poll option (anymore) on the forums?

10

CamBam help (General usage) / First time using the Nesting Function - advices if I want to later add more MOPs

« on: September 21, 2017, 18:52:20 pm »

Hello everyone, I used now for the first time the nesting function, as I quite rarely need to make multiple parts, today was that day and I though I can give it a try.

My issue started when I noticed I forgot to add a MOP (after milling almost all operations), there ware some holes I predrilled with a 3mm drill, but a few holes needed to be 6mm in diameter. When I wanted to add that MOP and continue with another one, that existed in the initial program, I noticed the nesting is NOT done the same, all the parts ware much closer one to another, even if I used the same settings.

Than I understood that I needed the exterior of my part so the nesting will be done correctly, I selected the finish profile operation made on the exterior contour - but something was still wrong, and I noticed only after milling a few parts

The distance set for the nesting (7mm), is not computed from the most exterior profiles, but instead from the actual toolpath, the first exterior profile MOP had a ROUGHING CLEARANCE of 0.3mm, when I selected only the finish pass (which didn't had the extra 0.3mm offset), it seemed to have placed the nested parts correctly, but I didn't noticed the distance was 0.3mm smaller than initial nesting, I only heard it was milling only on 3 sides of the parts, and one side milling much more than the others - the sound should have been identical on all sides

Bellow is a gif while I was alternating between initial machining and the next machinig part where I only selected the finish pass on the exterior profile.



So there is no way to have control of the nesting? It's hard for me to find the proper words I wanted to know if there is a way to set the nesting to make the "array copy" distance considering the actual polylines, and not the toolpaths.

11

CamBam help (General usage) / The easiest way to mill a black & white raster image ?

« on: July 29, 2017, 15:33:11 pm »

Hello guys,

can you tell me what is the easiest way to mill a black and white image, I want to mill the white areas at -1mm and the black areas to remain unimlled, I can reverse the image if it's needed.

I have tried the to convert the image to a surface, but than it fails when I make the 3D surface MOP (it's been almost 10 minutes since CamBam is not responding while generating the toolpaths)

My  PC is i7 / 16Gb RAM / SSD fpor the system partition

The image should be 400x400mm in size.

Thank you.

12

CamBam plus feedback / Funny, but CamBam saved the day again !!!

« on: May 30, 2017, 07:40:31 am »

Today I wanted to try something I seen on Pinterest (a while ago) and loved immediately, I will make something similar, or at least try!!!

Now a few weeks I tried to find a way to convert google maps tiles to vector, but I wasn't so successful, and today I found a way, but not using Google, but openstreetmap.org instead. It has by default an export to SVG option Just perfect!

Than I tried to import the SVG file into Fusion360, I tried multiple times but it failed, after it showed up a part of the file it was loading continuously for minutes. Than I tried with CorelDraw .. the same it failed, it even didn't show any contour, just loading continuously. So I tried 2 quite complex softwares, I was wondering if it's my PC, when looking at the resources used it wasn't even close to full, the CPU (i7-4771) was at 30% while importing, the ram the same 6Gb used from 16Gb available.

As CamBam doesn't import SVG I tried an free online converter to save the SVG file in DXF format, all good, the file size increased from 8Mb to 19Mb.

You should watch this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-SEfhSMH54

But I still had problems in the past with cambam, I download a 3D model of a mirror frame, I couldn't open it, but for simple dxf file CamBam seem to kick ass !!!! Well done !!!

13

CamBam help (General usage) / Resizing circles/or other forms is moving the object away

« on: May 29, 2017, 08:32:01 am »

Hello guys,

I seen this behavior from the begining and I kinda used to it in all those years, but I was wondering why the object is moving so much, wasn't a better idea on resize, to keep it centered? for example when resizing multiple circles I have to manually move all circles in the initial place (usually I copy/paste the original circle, and get the new one and drag it to the center of the original circle)

Is there a plugin, or a setting I can use to keep the resized object aligned centered ?

Thanks. Wish you an easy day in the workshop!

14

CamBam help (General usage) / Arc was ignored, the toolpath was a straight line between arc points

« on: May 11, 2017, 07:58:21 am »

I have a weird problem with a drawing and I don't know why, I tried arc fit option but didn't do any help, the arc seems to be made by just 2 points, but still the toolpath is generated as a straight line.

Any ideas ?

PS. The original file was a dxf that I imported, but than after I milled the part and noticed the top was straight, I exploded the contour, re-draw the arc, join and everything was ok

15

Members Machines / Why the steel part is moving in my vise ?

« on: April 25, 2017, 14:42:53 pm »

Hello guys,

yesterday I tried to make my first steel part (UPDATE. I think the steel is 1.2379, I found the invoice, but I can't find something similar in Gwizzard .. ), but it's not going to well so far, today I almost lost all the time trying some feed and speeds but everything I try it seems the part is moving in the vise, I'm quite frustated right now, untill now I used the HSS endmills purchased from Tormach , one 3/8 that chiped (one of the 4 flute) when the material moved in the vise .. and now a 5/16 HSS endmill, 4 flute, from the same set.



You can see in the first video above that the raw material was not too smoth, and also the paint was kind of thick, I though I should facemill those faces also, but now after I did it, when I tryed to mill it it moved again, once after milling about 10minutes and now right after starting again the part, at the first pass at 5mm depth.




I also used an extension to the hex key that I received with the vise, so I can tight it

I think my feeds and speeds are quite conservative, with the 5/16 (7.93mm) I used, but I know nothing about milling steel :

RPM 1700
DOC 5mm
Cut width 0.8mm
Feed 148mmpm

Here is a video with this 5/16" endmill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9_GJkJxVD4

Any advice is welcome. I'm triying to find the invoices for the steel raw material to see exactly what type of steel I try to mill, I know I purchased 2 different alloys, and one of the parts is intact, with yellow paint I can see SB0.1.140 .. does this mean anything ? anyway this is not what I tried to mill, it's just the other material I have.