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honda whisperer posted:I did. That's what's really breaking my brain. They are as far as I can tell identical. At least the finish pass. Run the gcode through beyond compare and see what's different? If the finish passes look the same, then the problem lies elsewhere. Did the finishes on all 4 sides look the same?
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Jun 24, 2021 12:03
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Karia posted:Last thought before going to bed: stress relieving causing the part to distort? It'd be weird to have that just make the part smaller and not bow it since you're presumably only doing one face in this operation, but internal stresses can do seriously wacky stuff, and could absolutely cause the part to shrink in only one direction. Yea this is my thought too. I wonder if your bar stock has some substantial stresses the roller direction and once you machine the part substantially it contorts. The obvious solution then is to leave enough material for 1-2 finish passes that happen at the very end (if your setup allows for it). EDIT: Actually I just saw you said 4140 that's already been heat treated. Although I've very rarely machined them, I believe this is less of a problem in steels that have already been heat treated unless youre removing a LOT of material by % of weight.
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Jun 24, 2021 13:00
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sharkytm posted:Run the gcode through beyond compare and see what's different? If the finish passes look the same, then the problem lies elsewhere. Did the finishes on all 4 sides look the same? Notepad++ also has a Compare plug-in that will do the same thing for you, if you don't want to pay for Beyond Compare. For reference: http://www.technicaloverload.com/compare-two-files-using-notepad/ Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 15:19
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Didn't have a chance to copy the gcode today but the other two parts/machines did the same thing and they're all working correctly now too.
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Jun 24, 2021 23:26
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Sounds like you appeased the machine spirits, somehow.
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Jun 25, 2021 01:01
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Trebuchet King posted:Sounds like you appeased the machine spirits, somehow. I'm not calling it yet, it's only the start. I do want to find the underlying cause even if it does keep working.
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Jun 25, 2021 01:22
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Oh, for sure. The sign shop I work at has been described as "haunted" to me many times, especially our router room, but I've enjoyed figuring out just what the skinny is on Weird Events. Only a few of them have been pranks!
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Jun 25, 2021 02:11
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Hey dudes. Do you think there are any fundamental blockers to a compact (Let's say, 25cm²) mill capable of cutting plastic, wood, and aluminum, that costs $3,000 USD or less? Is there a reason why something doesn't exist, or couldn't? Or maybe $5k for a 5-axis?] Any recommendations for a step-up from the 3018 pro? Maybe this? edit: I spoke too soon. Something similar exists! Pocket NC. $6K for a small 5-axis machine, with a small work area. I'm going to impulse buy one of these after a few too many drinks or cups of coffee. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jun 29, 2021 |
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Jun 29, 2021 21:26
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Neat, I'll take a look at that machine. Seems nifty. I was gonna say, for benchtop work, I might look at something like the Bantam Tools CNC router or the Tormach xsTECH. Entry level freestanding machines are going to be things like the Tormach PCNC 440, or some kind of roll your own. After that, it's pretty much "look for a used Haas or the next Tormach up" until you're around or above $20k. E: Goku poo poo they have a CAMworks post, God bless because making a 5 axis post sucks EE: loving that typo
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Jun 29, 2021 22:09
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Hey Goons... anyone up for a quick commission job? I've got a client I'm reproducing a few obscure movie props for, and he's real big on screen accuracy. I can work with that for the most part, but that also means that if a prop had metal parts, he wants the replica I'm making for him to also have metal parts. My workshop, such as it is, is a bedroom in my condo. I have a Shapeoko that I can do light metal work with, but most of these things need more than I can do with it. Specifically, I think some of these parts need to be turned, or machined in a way I'm not comfortable doing. The red parts are what I'm doing out of resin/plastic. The grey parts are what needs to be metal on this.      I did all of this up in a polygon modeler (3DS Max) initially because I was planning on 3D printing everything, so I don't have CAD files for this per se, but I do have .stl/.obj/whatevers of the parts. I live in L.A. and I've been trying to get quotes on this but I haven't had much luck, so I figured I'd check here. If anyone's up for it and wants to give me a price, I'd love if you'd PM me or e-mail adam@fusedcreations.com.
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Jun 29, 2021 22:19
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People are cutting aluminum with the onefinity I posted a few pages back. Seems totally doable it
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Jun 29, 2021 22:21
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NewFatMike posted:Neat, I'll take a look at that machine. Seems nifty. It appears a big limfac on the Pocket NC is the small work area.
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Jun 29, 2021 22:23
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Machinist I know doesn't like the tiny leadscrew on the pocket NC. Not sure how much it matters, or if he's just being a snob
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Jun 29, 2021 23:23
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Dominoes posted:I appreciate the recs! Shifter knobs and keychain dickbutts seem to be about what you can get out of there, but it's a five axis!
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Jun 29, 2021 23:48
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the humble taig micromill is small and can mill aluminium, steel, whatever, and definitely comes in at under 3k even CNCed up. can also do wood and stuff but it's not set up for it like a router, it doesn't have the spindle or feed speeds you want for that. if you wanna do mostly metal at a budget in a benchtop machine it absolutely holds its own, but if you're more of a router-that-occasionally-cuts-aluminium kinda guy, it wouldn't make much sense.
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Jun 30, 2021 00:01
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I keep forgetting about that because I hate Mach 3 so much. 😹
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Jun 30, 2021 03:20
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It's a slightly silly thing, but I'm happy my Onefinity works wirelessly. Loading gcode straight from my office desktop pc is just  Never had a machine I could do that with before.
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Jul 1, 2021 18:53
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I made a thread in BFC for documenting some side projects I want to work on. One of them is trying to greatly simplify setting up a motion system, like a CNC machine. I'd love to know what the biggest issues you faced in your machine conversion were or why you haven't decided to build a CNC machine yet.
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Jul 1, 2021 18:56
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Is there a good way in SW to tell the device it needs to ramp in gradually, or set a slower feedrate? I'm looking mainly at the Operation Parameters screen for a Contour mill. The default generated by SW for this ~1mm thick sheet of aluminum is to plunge in and cut it all in one go. On my machine, this results in it struggling / skipping, and ultimately mangling the cut. The software thinks it's been going smoothly, so the tool position becomes desynced from the software coordinates. (It lags behind due to getting hung up) This could be fixed probably by the ramp or slower feedrate, but it's not obvious how to set this. Ie on the F/S tab, XY feedrate is greyed out. I'm trying to behave myself, and not lower the feedrate in G-code.
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Jul 2, 2021 15:16
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Yeah, there are a few different entry methods. It's in the operations parameters dialog, I don't have it in front of me but I thought for sure it was in the tab that's the name of the operation (in this case, contour mill).
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Jul 2, 2021 16:33
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Dominoes posted:Is there a good way in SW to tell the device it needs to ramp in gradually, or set a slower feedrate? I'm looking mainly at the Operation Parameters screen for a Contour mill. This is in any operation with a lead in/lead out tab. You can set specific feeds/speeds for different parts of lead in/lead out there. I think you're SOL for doing that in most other ops except for maybe Entry options in the Advanced tabs.
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Jul 3, 2021 01:12
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MasterCAM knowers, is there a special spiral op or G or M code? I fielded a customer support call from a guy asking why his spirals weren't being posted as arcs, and I was just thinking "... Because they aren't arcs?" They used to use MasterCAM and use a Fanuc based controller for a Doosan mill in case there's a weird controller thing I don't know.
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Jul 9, 2021 01:48
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Not that it is likely to help you in the slightest, but I was impressed that LinuxCNC supports loops and trig functions which are both used in one of the spiral demos.
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Jul 9, 2021 02:01
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NewFatMike posted:MasterCAM knowers, is there a special spiral op or G or M code? I fielded a customer support call from a guy asking why his spirals weren't being posted as arcs, and I was just thinking "... Because they aren't arcs?" I assume you mean a spiral in the work plane and not a helical interpolation. The only thing I can think of would be if they were expecting NURBS output? That would create a program with a similar look to a helical interpolation with a bunch of g02.
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Jul 9, 2021 02:09
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NewFatMike posted:MasterCAM knowers, is there a special spiral op or G or M code? I fielded a customer support call from a guy asking why his spirals weren't being posted as arcs, and I was just thinking "... Because they aren't arcs?" This is OLD mastercam knowledge, I last touched it in 2014 but I recall that you could output arcs when doing HSM style tool paths in order to reduce the length of programs. (e.g. for a fanuc with 1MB of memory). Memory is def fuzzy on this and this woulda been like MCAM X4 or maybe one or two after that.
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Jul 9, 2021 02:13
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NewFatMike posted:MasterCAM knowers, is there a special spiral op or G or M code? I fielded a customer support call from a guy asking why his spirals weren't being posted as arcs, and I was just thinking "... Because they aren't arcs?" You would look for a setting somewhere about "arc fit" in the toolpath options. This isn't specific to pocketing, it's in the toolpath strategy options where you set stepover/stepdown values. Damnit I remember using this in 2019 because the engineers used splines for something that should have been 3 tangent arcs and without using the arc fit option the CNC's lookahead was applying ridiculous deceleration every .06" because it was being given a bunch of linear moves instead of "close enough" arcs at .001" deviation. Edit: It's in Linking Parameters!
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Jul 9, 2021 02:37
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Thanks! This was a call for CAMworks, but they were comparing it to MasterCAM. I'll see if there's something I can do on that one. I almost think if they're that worried, they could probably figure out a spiral curve sketch and set a curve feature, but again the post might just interpolate that also E: I'll also see if there's a special trochoidal function changing it to VoluMill (so dumb)
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Jul 9, 2021 02:47
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I'm pretty sure the same thing can be set in Camworks in the Machine Definition settings under the Posting tab, or in individual toolpaths under either the NC or Advanced tabs. Look for the word "deviation" and a check box that says something about using arcs. I'll look for it and post a screenshot from work in the morning if you don't find it first.
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Jul 9, 2021 02:57
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Fanuc actually does have a specific G code command for spirals, weirdly enough. G2.1/3.1, depending on which direction you want to go. I know I read about it a few years ago in one of the Fanuc G code manuals, I'd have to dig back through my archives for more details. Not sure if it's something you need to buy an option for. The below blog is the only evidence that it exists I can find via google, but I swear I'm not making this up: http://cncprograming.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-make-spiral-interpolation-g021.html
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Jul 9, 2021 03:11
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I've seen that before, but it has to be enabled on the machine and you really need to double check the g-code table in the manual for that machine before attempting to use it (just to make sure the machine seller didn't bastardize the parameters).
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Jul 9, 2021 03:19
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I'm pretty sure the same thing can be set in Camworks in the Machine Definition settings under the Posting tab, or in individual toolpaths under either the NC or Advanced tabs. 10-4, I'll keep my peepers out, thanks for checking for a screenshot!
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Jul 9, 2021 03:51
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NewFatMike posted:10-4, I'll keep my peepers out, thanks for checking for a screenshot! On any given 2.5D toolpath operation parameters under the Advanced Tab, look for something like this:  When it comes to 3d toolpaths you're kinda hosed, though. The option isn't there yet as of Camworks 2020 (we haven't updated to 2021 yet). EDIT: And it's also worth noting that unless your post-processor was set up to support it, enabling it on the CAMWorks end does jack poo poo. The post-processor will ignore it and use the "default" code output if the tag for arc fit isn't marked "True" there in addition to the CAM end. We had to request that canned cycle output be enabled in the post processor because the post was outputting long code during our initial testing of the post for a retrofitted Centroid CNC mill, so it's a lot of caveat emptor when doing things. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 10:43
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Thanks a million! I gave it a shot on this customer file with a few posts, but no dice. Spirals are fucky, I guess. That one is definitely in the back pocket for some other situations, though.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:52
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Update: I think this is a function of CAMworks creating spirals as a series of straight lines in the CL creation when using the "Spiral In/Out" strategy. I created a spiral sketch and made a curve feature using a facing mill, and using arc fitting, I've got a pretty solid mix of lines and arcs. Thought I'd share in case that comes up for y'all
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Jul 9, 2021 17:07
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I'd appreciate any advice as I'm totally new to this stuff. I was considering getting a 3018 prover primarily to do better cuts/drills on plastic end caps or possibly aluminum end caps/plates. Basically the sort of stuff you'd do through https://www.frontpanelexpress.com/. Just drills and occasionally slots/shapes for different connectors, USB, LEDs, etc... Possibly engraving small text/labels in anodized aluminum, depending on how that looks. 80-90% of it would be plastic, with just occasional aluminum and it's fine if it's even extremely slow at that. This page at hammond's website shows the kind of boxes I'm talking about, with either plastic or aluminum end caps. https://www.hammfg.com/electronics/small-case/extruded/1455. The only other thing would be occasionally doing some wood, but similarly mostly cutting through shapes with sometimes partial depth on the bottom to countersink things. I couldn't find anything else in this price range at all (<$600), but I'm open to any other ideas. I'm also curious about any suggestions where to start for software. Get the GRBL or Mach3 version of it? And what design software might I look at for flat plate cutouts. I don't have a windows machine in my workshop, only linux.
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Jul 19, 2021 20:11
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I, personally, hate the poo poo out of Mach 3, but I have yet to convert my 3018 to GRBL, but there's a variety of motion control softwares out there for it. Also, Mach 3 is Windows exclusive, so I guess that answers that anyway :v I'm curious to hear how your adventures in aluminum will go with it - I'm disappointed in some cycle times on a more advanced wood part. E: CAM on Linux is harder. Your options are pretty much Kiri:Moto and FreeCAD. The former will take designs from whatever software you're going to use (FreeCAD, OnShape and 3DX xDesign are the only reasonable ones that come to mind). You can also get GCode out of Inkscape, which would be a fine design software for this kind of thing, but I've never used it. I can't really dish on details, but the 3DX stuff will be available for makers at a good price ($99/year or $10/mo) real soon. NewFatMike fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 01:25
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Anybody have any thoughts about the current MaslowCNC kit? I'm thinking about building one later this year. http://maslowcommunitygarden.org/Maslow-kits-for-sale-soon..html
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Jul 20, 2021 01:37
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I looked into them a while back and there was one with chains that was a substantial upgrade over the base one, but I cannot remember for the life of me who made it and none of the websites I've come across seem right, e.g. maker made.
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Jul 20, 2021 01:56
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The one I linked is supposed to be that one. I'll dig into it more once I finish moving into my new home and get settled in.
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Jul 20, 2021 09:12
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After doing more research I think a flow for me doing panels for electronics projects might be: Kicad PCB layout software generates excellon drills & gerbers -> FlatCAM produces gcode -> Candle -> GRBL mill, which should all be doable on linux That would let me do any kind of drills or milled out areas pretty easily I think. Eventually if I want to do more 3d stuff I'll have to learn new stuff. Also my wife has expressed interest in doing laser engraving/cutting, so I think my options might be: A) Just get a 3018 Pro w/ laser, then if we both actually use it a lot I could get something larger for aluminum and let her use the small one w/ the laser full time. Or similarly a larger laser engraver for her. B) Get a 3018 Prover and possibly upgrade the spindle later if I want to do heavier stuff, but swapping the laser/spindle seems tedious and with a laser this brings the cost close to... C) Get something in the $1000-1500 range w/ a laser, maybe with a dual head if that's a thing? Would have to do more research.
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Jul 20, 2021 14:18
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