Official Luthiers Forum!

Anyone using verification software? If I'm going to spend more money on SW I'd prefer something sexier like t-splines but ncplot has great tool path graphics and it drip feeds. Having the operator visually confirm what he's about to cut would be a huge bonus.

Mach 3 displays the tool path on screen and So far that's good enough. I've caught a bad setting in Mach that was screwing up arcs from visual mill before I wrecked a part.

_________________
http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I like to verify path by placing a pen in the chuck and running it at a low RPM. You can bend a pen to approximate the cutter diameter and have it just touch a sheet of paper. That makes a real inexpensive and provides a visual verification.

_________________
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." G. K. Chesterton.

MadCAM has toolpath simulation, and I thought Visual Mill did as well?

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

VM does have toolpath simulation but that's kind of like proofreading your own paper - e.g. VM requires arcs to be done in incremental mode. Mach 3 default settings are in absolute so...toolpath looks fine on VM but, arcs come out huge and dangerous on Mach 3!

_________________
http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

You know Bob, you made me think of something else - unless it's your machine controller doing the simulation e.g. mach 3, you might not catch an error if it's a wrong setting unless you verify that the simulator and machine are identically configured and react identically to all codes.

In my case, for one of my first tests I did a little toolpath that had an arc in it - first time I loaded it in Mach 3 the toolpath preview it showed a much bigger arc in the toolpath. I ran it anyway and so realized that the toolpath preview is accurate.

Later I did another part with an arc in it but I again saw the big arc. Called up Mecsoft tech support and had the problem solved in a second.

_________________
http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I've used vericut in the past, it gets around the issue Andy brings up about playing back the cad input for the cl file by using the posted file in the simulation.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I've always been OK using MadCAM's simulation, but one thing to keep in mind there is that MadCAM doesn't support arcs at all. Big files, but they work really well.

Using Vcarve Pro, which does support arcs, I've had problems in the past when I haven't had my Mach 3 set up just right where arcs in the simulation mode didn't even come close to what the machine tried to cut. Arc support brings a lot of baggage along with it.

Dave

Are you sure that will get around the problem though? In the case of Mach 3 arc support, VM requires the machine set to incremental. If vericut is set to incremental automatically but your machine controller is trying absolute, I would think that it would still slip by.

_________________
http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

In vericut you run against a model of your machine/controller. Also you should be setting the incremental/absolute mode in the first line of your program. i.e. G90/G91.
If you verify in the cad/cam package, your verifying the created graphical toolpath, not the clfile. Sometimes (very rarely) you may not get that. I have had rare occasions where the graphic toolpath didn't match the actual clfile, on multiple systems over many years. They've all gotten better at this though and I think these days it's pretty much a non-issue.
Maybe I'm missing something, sorry if I'm off on a tangent here.

_________________
Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

No external software can account for having a broken controller. I'm surprised Art hasn't put in some sort of setup wizard if this many people are having trouble getting the settings right in Mach.

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I hate to bust your bubble, but Art retired a few years ago. I don't think there has been any new releases since then. Who ever is running it now just sells the software.

That explains things

I've never used Mach, only hardware controllers or hardware-based controllers (programmable DSPs), so my bubble is safe...but I hope no-one lands on me if bubbles are bursting overhead!

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

http://www.gearotic.com/
This may be what Art is up to lately.

I was looking aroun on the Artsoft page because I could swear that I saw some stuff that implied that Art was still working on Mach and inadvertently discovered that if you run Mach 3 without the parallel driver it can be used for free with unlimited lines of code...cheap toolpath verification....assuming you have it configures the same as your machine.

_________________
http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

No swearing around here, Andy.