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3D Milling from CU (#207)
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API  
#41 Posted : Friday, May 18, 2007 2:40:19 AM(UTC)
API

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 2/19/2007(UTC)
Posts: 129
Jol, by doing the 2D cuts as solids we only enter the total depth of cut which we often specifiy at the total depth of the model. For example, if we had a 2" tall part with a pocket in it. The pocket has several steps to get to the final depth of 1.5" at .375", 1.25 and finaly 1.5. We could specify a TOTAL cut depth of 2" and (for the most part) Gibbs cuts at the corect Z depths. Often, we don't even know what the steps are. As for hardware, we recently moved both our seats to Mac's in Parallels. One on a mini and one on a big box with dual Xeon chips. The Mini replaced a 2 year old Gateway that died. Our PC hardware seems to have a very short life span. There is also a reseller of VX in our area that demos VX on a MacBook Pro. There's no problem with the dongles and the way that Parallels works now, we save our Gibbs files into folders on the Mac side. So all data is on the Mac side.

Patrick
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jol  
#42 Posted : Friday, May 18, 2007 2:49:37 AM(UTC)
jol

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Patrick .. this is interesting stuff !

Wish I could pop around and see what you're doing.

Gibbs are quoting 23k for the full package in NZ .. close to an average annual wage .. so that's not about to happen

So, I'm really interested to see what can be done with a 'budget' offering
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tmay  
#43 Posted : Friday, May 18, 2007 3:01:17 AM(UTC)
tmay

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 2/21/2007(UTC)
Posts: 278
API wrote:
Jol, by doing the 2D cuts as solids we only enter the total depth of cut which we often specifiy at the total depth of the model. For example, if we had a 2" tall part with a pocket in it. The pocket has several steps to get to the final depth of 1.5" at .375", 1.25 and finaly 1.5. We could specify a TOTAL cut depth of 2" and (for the most part) Gibbs cuts at the corect Z depths. Often, we don't even know what the steps are. As for hardware, we recently moved both our seats to Mac's in Parallels. One on a mini and one on a big box with dual Xeon chips. The Mini replaced a 2 year old Gateway that died. Our PC hardware seems to have a very short life span. There is also a reseller of VX in our area that demos VX on a MacBook Pro. There's no problem with the dongles and the way that Parallels works now, we save our Gibbs files into folders on the Mac side. So all data is on the Mac side.

Patrick


Patrick,

Could you give me the specifics on which USB adaptor you used for the (parallel port) dongle? With that, I would give GibbsCAM a shot on my mac mini.

Thanks,

tom
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API  
#44 Posted : Saturday, May 19, 2007 4:02:49 AM(UTC)
API

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 2/19/2007(UTC)
Posts: 129
Tom,
We have USB dongles for Gibbs. We used to have the parallel port ones but switched. They send you a USB dongle and you have 2 weeks or a month to return the other one before they charge you for an additional seat. We did the exchange when we were still on the yearly maintenance. I don't know if it makes a difference.
If there's more interest, I'll post screen shots of our typical process.

Patrick
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tmay  
#45 Posted : Saturday, May 19, 2007 4:58:10 AM(UTC)
tmay

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 2/21/2007(UTC)
Posts: 278
Patrick,

Thanks.

I'll be on maintenance again next month. I usually slack on that for a few months until they have something to update. I stopped by the Apple store and talked to a young guy working there (EE student) and he thought that I could just get a convertor, but a USB dongle would be a better solution anyway.

tom
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jol  
#46 Posted : Saturday, May 26, 2007 3:57:55 PM(UTC)
jol

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Thank you to everybody for your input - I've learned heaps !

My thoughts so far in filling my needs are ..

... that ShopBot is very interesting at the price
... with MeshCAM to get started and VisualMill as a pro tool

Any comments are very welcome as ever
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norbertsf  
#47 Posted : Saturday, May 26, 2007 5:44:39 PM(UTC)
norbertsf

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 4/10/2007(UTC)
Posts: 116
I've been demoing the MeshCAM Demo with Cutviewer.
The mill guy (we lease space to him and his Hurco machines) is retired and he saw the demo and was amazed at importing the geometry to create the tool paths.

It's not all straightforward tho.
I'm demoing it on VirtualPC on a mac (PPC).
I've exported as STL to MeshCAM, then need to "scale the geometry" 12x.
Have defined the tools and created the tool paths--> export the code, and then import into Cutviewer Demo and run the "virtual animation" of the milling. VERY cool!

The quirks. Well....now we have to have a "controller" send the g-code to the Hurco machine for milling. Apparently that requires MORE software. In our case it's DNC software (PC Again). That part we haven't done yet.
And in our case we might have to spend @ $800 to just "connect" these older CNC machines to the computer.

But we can see how it will be worth it for the furniture/product prototyping.

Oh and "Sheetcam" is a 2.5 equivalent software to MeshCAM for simpler profile work FYI.

Norbert
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jol  
#48 Posted : Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:07:33 PM(UTC)
jol

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Great Norbert

That sounds (mostly) positive

I'm going to forward your comments to Robert Grzesek of GRZ Software, who develops MeshCAM .. and see if he has any comment. He's been very helpful so far ! If I get a response, I'll post here

Cheers, Jol
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norbertsf  
#49 Posted : Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:51:59 PM(UTC)
norbertsf

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 4/10/2007(UTC)
Posts: 116
jol,

I've already sent him a note. Thanks tho.

I have to get some info to him to get the appropriate post processor for our machines. I'll let you know how this whole thing works out.

Our particular situation is that our machines are older and communicating with them may require some hoop jumping.

I guess i'm wondering if the more "expensive software" have all of these features combined, or if the same issues would arise. (not having tried others yet)

Norbert
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jol  
#50 Posted : Saturday, May 26, 2007 7:18:10 PM(UTC)
jol

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Norbert, understood !

Sounds like I won't encounter this

.. but perhaps the scale issue - which hopefully he'll have a look at

Cheers also for the tip on Cutviewer Demo. He recommended another one .. I'll try to dig out the name
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victorf57  
#51 Posted : Saturday, June 2, 2007 12:50:34 PM(UTC)
victorf57

Rank: Member

Joined: 3/24/2007(UTC)
Posts: 58
To all that are interested.
Mesh cam has gone up in price to &175.00
but is still one vender selling it for $135.00 I don't know how much longer ..
I have just purchased mine from them
here is the link www.tabletopmachineshop.com
look under software.
victor
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victorf57  
#52 Posted : Saturday, June 2, 2007 12:52:24 PM(UTC)
victorf57

Rank: Member

Joined: 3/24/2007(UTC)
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To all that are interested.
Mesh cam has gone up in price to $175.00
but there is still one vender selling it for $135.00 I don't know how much longer ..
I have just purchased mine from them
here is the link www.tabletopmachineshop.com
look under software.
victor
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jol  
#53 Posted : Tuesday, June 5, 2007 2:54:52 PM(UTC)
jol

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Hi Victor

Thanks .. but I'm nowhere near ready yet .. so I'll wait

MeshCAM seems very good for what it is .. and I like how it's presented. I realise it's relatively simple software, but it looks like a great stepping stone without risking hoops of cash. It would be interesting to hear how you get on with it Victor.

I have a question: On finally (literally 4 weeks later) receiving info on Mayka yesterday .. I am having a look into that. It looks like a very mature product - it used to be on OS9 .. but has long since left the Mac. It's mid price, but still expensive by MeshCAM standards. One problem I can see is - if it takes 4 weeks to get a sales guy to send you an email - you're gonna get piss all help when you need it !?

One of his claims is that Mayka can drive a given machine - in this case the Roland 650 - to produce a part ten times quicker than the stock Modela software. "10 mins instead of 1.7 hours".

I'm uncomfortable about such claims .. any comments on this or on Mayka generally ? Thanks !
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victorf57  
#54 Posted : Tuesday, June 5, 2007 7:53:39 PM(UTC)
victorf57

Rank: Member

Joined: 3/24/2007(UTC)
Posts: 58
Hmm!
Perhaps the Modela software sucked ?:-)
It does sound fishy
try posting your question on the DYCNC yahoo group.
I'm sure someone will have something to say about it.
Victor
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grahambowler  
#55 Posted : Wednesday, June 6, 2007 5:56:48 AM(UTC)
grahambowler

Rank: Junior Member

Joined: 4/2/2007(UTC)
Posts: 1
Hi

I've used Mayka, and it does what it does very well. You get a huge amount of control over where and how cutting takes place, places that need lots of detail combined with less detailed paths. I'm not convinced by the 10mins from 1.7 hours though! The UI can be a bit unforgiving - it's not a program for casual use, i've never attempted to demonstrate it to students, but if i use it a lot it becomes very quick to set it up and get machining going.

I've imported STLs from Rhino and Solidworks (when testing stl export from solidworks i've gotten STLs that range from 128k to 19mb from the same model) - the bigger STL files don't take much longer to generate the toolpaths, the machined meshes are much smoother, although actual screen refresh with mayka can be a bit slow.

We then use Galaad module Kay to actually drive our Isel/Unimatic machine...

gb
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jol  
#56 Posted : Wednesday, September 26, 2007 4:29:31 AM(UTC)
jol

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It may be worth checking out CUT3D

It seems marginally more sophistocated than meshCAM - and around the same low price

Not heaps of control - but very graphical & easy to use

I think it has some severe limitations compared to the high-end stuff out there.

However, ease of use is great .. and 80% functionality for 5% of the cost is a good trade-off. Will let you know how I get on with the trial

http://www.vectric.com/WebSite/...tric/cut3d/c3d_index.htm
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jol  
#57 Posted : Monday, October 22, 2007 6:02:36 AM(UTC)
jol

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V5 beta still has the default STL output set to ASCII

All other apps I have come across use binary as the default

This is because binary files are created at a fraction of the size

Can we change this default please

Or perhaps do away with ASCII STL outputs altogether ?
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jol  
#58 Posted : Monday, October 22, 2007 3:29:30 PM(UTC)
jol

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Wonderful - thank you Scott !!!
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mat  
#59 Posted : Thursday, November 8, 2007 12:47:53 PM(UTC)
mat

Rank: Member

Joined: 5/10/2007(UTC)
Posts: 30
great work jol on pushing this issue , i have been looking at the vetric software as a cost effective improvement on the modela software that is bundled with the roland machines however I would love to think a mac solution will happen , i am looking forward to seeing how the binary stls will export . i am very impressed by the cnc DIY crowd out there and what can be done for so little money but without spending a few k , it's a risk when you are time poor ( business operator ) . i do think the gap between high and low end cnc machines is a huge market and will hopefully start to offer more affordable and reliable options .
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RC-Modeller  
#60 Posted : Thursday, November 8, 2007 7:58:46 PM(UTC)
RC-Modeller

Rank: Junior Member

Joined: 10/30/2007(UTC)
Posts: 12
Hello,

sorry to enter your discussion so late, but i have just joined the forum. I use CU+AeroPack to design RC-airplane models and mill the molds for the wings and fuelage on a self made 3 Axis portal milling machine.

I was also looking for a reasonable priced CAM and found a start up company in Germany (http://www.condacam.de/) who offers a reasonable priced CAM with good functionality and easy to use. They also desiged a post processor (within 2 days!) for my CNC software free of charge. The only disadvantage what I can see is that the software is only available German right now, but..... maybe in the future they may translate it also in english.
There are 2 different version available:

CondaCam1.1 at 1600 Euro

3D-> 18 strategies, Realtime Simulation, 2 and 2.5 D Strategies, Postprocessor Editor+Assistent.

CondaCam1.1-LT at 600 Euro

3D-> 9 strategies, Realtime Simulation, 2 and 2.5 D Strategies, Postprocessor Editor+Assistent.

You also can upgrade from LT to full by just paying the price difference.

You can download a demo from the website http://www.condacam.de/

I also own DeskProto 4.1(http://www.deskproto.com) at similar pricing. Their great asset is an assistent function when you start up the program it virtally walks you through the whole process from loading the file, position on the tool.....to creation of the toolpaths-> great! DeskProto can handle 3,4 and 5 Axis milling machines (the standard post processors include various Roland tools) but the functionality is somewhat limited compared to condacam. Almost any language you desire is available.
A fully functional demo (30 days trial) is available for download too.

Mabe you would like to give it a try,

Hans
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