Topics

1

CamBam help (General usage) / Ball Mill Advice

« on: September 29, 2025, 22:47:03 pm »

I am 3D Profiling tapered oval spokes in Cast Iron wheels for a 5 inch gauge locomotive.

5 mm end mill, 0.5 mm clearance, followed by 5 mm ball mill, 0 mm clearance.

The spoke oval profile produced is wrong, correct overall size but the side curvature is too sharp.

A 5 mm end mill, 0 mm clearance, is the correct size and profile, but shows the depth steps.

Just looking for advice and suggestions on where to look for hints on how to mix and match end mills and ball mills.

John.

2

CamBam help (General usage) / Waterline Finish with Bull Nose - Radius Allowance

« on: September 18, 2025, 00:13:32 am »

Using CB for 3D Profiling with 5 mm bull nose cutter.
Looks good.
I can report MeshLab is very useful.

While playing around (learning ?), I believe I saw CB report the cutter path calculations allowed multiple cut radii.
That is, the actual cutting point was divided up into, say 6, points along the mill curvature.

But currently, I am not seeing this reported.

Could someone enlighten me as to the conditions for reporting the multiple step - or was I dreaming ?

John.

3

CamBam help (General usage) / Errors in stl File - Mesh Correction Tool

« on: July 03, 2025, 02:06:39 am »

I am milling 5" miniature railway wheels in cast iron using an stl file generated by FreeCad.
The stl file opens and appears Ok in Blender.

The wheel has 8 spokes, so the MOPs are divided up into 8 separate stages of Pocketing and Waterline Finishing to a depth of 9.3 mm.
Using a polyline as a boundary and 5 mm carbide bull cutter, CB took 3.5 h to analyze and 2 h to write out.
The file is 750 kB and runs 36 minutes for an acceptable result.
 
First couple of  pockets went Ok.
Reduced the depth increment from 0.1 mm to 0.2 mm for the 3rd pocket to see the effect on code generation times and finish.
CB spent a couple of hours of analysis, 25 minutes of writing, for a trivial small Gcode file that  is very wrong.

Errors were reported during the process, incomplete polylines etc.

What recommendations can be mode for a stl file mesh correction tool ?

John

4

CamBam help (General usage) / Polylines - Draw and Edit - Changed

« on: June 29, 2025, 05:19:01 am »

I recently added the plug-in Numerical Transform.
It works wonderfully.

But, now drawing and editing of polylines seems different.

Can anyone confirm ?
It could be just my 80 yo self failing !
Perhaps I have always done it incorrectly, and got away with it.

Drawing a polyline now requires the centre button to terminate, I thought is was just the LMB + ESC.
And breaking at intersections no longer works.

I have started searching, but comments welcomed.
John

5

CamBam help (General usage) / Transformation Rotate

« on: June 23, 2025, 05:51:08 am »

I am 3D milling an ordinary railway wheel, 8 spokes and a flange on what I call the back.
Source file is a stl generated by FreeCad and checked on Blender.
First MOPs are intended to be pockets, then Waterline Rough and Finish on the backside.

CamBam opens normally showing a plan view of the wheel.

The XZ and YZ views show the flange uppermost.
But the XY view appears to show the flange at the bottom (checked by slightly moving with ALT+LMB).

Have I got an option incorrectly set somewhere ?

6

CamBam help (General usage) / Scan along Polyline

« on: June 12, 2025, 08:40:32 am »

Can I nominate a polyline for the tool to follow with repeat stepdown to a 3D surface ?

This would be handy for finishing a Waterline Rough/Finish job with a small ball mill without wasting a lot of air cutting time.

Love CB, thanks to all for the efforts to answers way-out questions like mine.
John.

7

Installation Help / Tool Library - Not Generated

« on: February 22, 2025, 03:03:48 am »

Ubuntu 24.04.
Had problems with CamBam 1.0 rc3 over the last several months, with both the problems described below.

Removed every vestige of CB and did a fresh install, with check of Mono.NET at 6.-- something.
Install did not report any errors or problems.

There is no Tools.xml to be found in my system.

The previous deleted Tools.xml is still available in the Trash.
But this xml file would not open into spreadsheet form, only text edit form.

Additionally, the various dialog boxes do not show the text name of the button.

What to do ?

8

Installation Help / Dialog Box Button Text Disappeared

« on: December 27, 2024, 21:49:37 pm »

CamBam Version 1 on Ubuntu 24.04 and Lubuntu 24.04.

The attached image shows the dialog box when I select "Open".
The text entries on the buttons are missing.

Other dialog boxes show the same problem.

This probably a fault with the windows driver in Linux.
Previous versions of Cambam on previous releases of Linux did not have the problem

Just asking here to see if others have any advice.

9

CamBam help (General usage) / 3D Scrolling

« on: November 23, 2024, 08:11:22 am »

I have an office laptop with Lubuntu and a workshop desktop with Ubuntu.

Cambam documentation states 3D scrolling uses ALT+LMB (Alternate button on keyboard plus depression of left mouse button, then move mouse).

This works fine on Ubuntu, but not on Lubuntu.

Anyone else with a similar problem, and their solution (if any) ?

Keep well,
John.

10

CamBam help (General usage) / FreeCad stl file not opening correctly

« on: February 27, 2024, 06:27:54 am »

I have generated a stl file using FreeCad that does not open correctly in CB.
Tried it in Blender with a different (incorrect) result.

I need pointing at a discussion on what aspects of stl files that cause problems.

I suspect a different model-build method in FreeCad will be the solution.

My stl file is 33 Mb, so not attached at the moment.
A picture of the model is attached.
John.

11

CamBam help (General usage) / 3D Milling - Getting Started

« on: December 20, 2023, 10:27:45 am »

I have used CB for a few years for simple profile routing and machining.

Now I need to do some complex 3D milling of stl file defined solid parts.
The first challenge is to nominate a selected surface of the stl file to be milled.

The documentation lists some Boundary defining aspects, but I cannot find any descriptive examples on how to apply them.
Could someone please just point me to some examples ?

Keep well,
John.

12

Installation Help / Ubuntu Mate - Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS - Not Run

« on: November 05, 2023, 07:22:04 am »

Fresh install of Ubuntu Mate, then Cambam 1.0.

The install seemed Ok, no errors reported.
CB won't open, no errors reported.

I already have CB operating on a separate machine with Lubuntu 22.04 LTS.
The test with Ubuntu Mate is to see if that overcomes the dreaded 'Alt+Left Mouse' scroll issue.

My next move is to update the Mate to 22.04
If someone knows for sure that Mate suffers the same problem with scrolling, let me know and I will try another distribution.

John.

13

CamBam help (General usage) / ALT+Left Mouse - 3D Scrolling

« on: October 18, 2023, 09:19:37 am »

I run Lubuntu 22.04 LTS.
The ALT+LeftMouse selection for 3D scrolling doesn't work.
This is critical for my projected projects.

Searching reveals it is an old problem, but very little on correction, mitigation or work-around.

It seems to be a difficulty with OpenBox passing through the key bindings to the application (CamBam).

Seeking a path forward.
Thanks in advance,
John.

14

CamBam help (General usage) / Duplicate Co-ordinates after G2 - Bad Drawing

« on: July 30, 2021, 00:23:37 am »

I have been experimenting with G42, cutter compensation, to establish the cut on my mill.

I instructed CB to generate code for the profile of a pocket with Tool Diameter = 0.

When I tried to run the code on LinuxCNC with the tool diameter set in the Tool Table, I got error messages and the code would not run.
Inspected the code and discovered that a number of G2 moves had the target co-ord repeated on the next line with a G1.

Generally, the repeated c-ords were slightly different, more or less digits of precision and roundings, all trivial differences.
Removed all the duplicated lines and the code ran fine.

I know that LinuxCNC calculates line-by-line the tool path using simple mathematics to allow for tool diameter.

Previous efforts along the same lines did not suffer the duplicates.
I assume LinuxCNC saw the trivial differences as intended tool movements and the tool path mathematics failed,

Can anyone shed any light on what I did in CB to initiate these duplicates ?

Keep well,
John (in Lockdown Sydney).

15

Installation Help / Lubuntu 21.04 - Correct Download to Install

« on: June 10, 2021, 23:38:50 pm »

Hi,
I have trialled CB in the past on a previous computer with Lubuntu 18.04, not sure what CB download was used.
Because of problems with the Lubuntu upgrades, I am forced to run the latest rolling upgrade, currently 21.04.

I have decided to permanently install CB, but not sure what download to use.

Because of backups being used to re-populate the folder system on the new computer, I have some CB files in various locations.
Should I remove all earlier CB remnants before starting the new install ?

Keep well,
John.