I am new to CNC routers and recently purchased a machine that was built by an individual that got parts from Open Builds. I honestly have no clue if I even have everything hooked back up correctly as I have some wires that are not connected to anything. Is there anyone that could help with this if I could post some pics? Thanks and God Bless,
I will be sure to tomorrow. I am a Firefighter and at the fire department tonight but will try to take some pics tomorrow. Thanks for the willingness to help!
I'm also new but I find it strange that the OP never came back. I have a completed OpenBuild that I too bought from a member here and it does work. He gave me one gcode of a storm trooper, which I can run. But so far that is all I can do. It appears that you can do some limited things just with Bcnc, but I haven't found enough info on the web to actually try something. I know that I need to learn say, Fusion 360, which I have downloaded and will start that learning curve. I would just like to do anything simple like just "carve" my name into a "work piece". I dee the Text in tools but it ask for a font and I don't see any fonts listed, there, but in another part, it shows a couple of fonts. We are talking a complete newbie in CNC, but a willing and anxious student. Thanks
There are free Fusion360 classes online every other week. See calendar and register here Events | Autodesk Fusion 360
F-Engrave Have you tried F- Engrave? It's no F360, but it's simple and good for doing text. You may have to clean up the gcode from time to time though. You can also insert black and white pictures. Joe
I'm willing to try anything. Cleaning up gcode at this time will be a stretch, but I taught myself HTML, Foxpro (old timers might remember) so I have no doubt that I will figure it out.
Download and Install Sketchup Make 2016 "Link" Download and Install SktchuCAM "Link" Video tutorial for engraving with sketchup and sketchucam. ( Play with the settings to match your work size and endmill / material requirements. These are just quick demo settings to show the work flow ) F-Engrave DeskEngrave NCplot Stickfont MicroTech online tool OutlineArt can all get the job done as well, Play with them and see what works best for you.
Thanks KYO, I have Sketchup Make 2016, and I followed the link to the Sketchucam but it says download not available. Is there another option?
Ok, got going following your directions, all went well until, you changed the Depth to 5%. Nothing that I did would change it. EDIT I figured this out, I now have 5% Then when you hit the green arrow it went to CAMotics. When I hit the green arrow it went to save a file (gcode_out.cnc) which I did . I have CAMotics loaded and running. Obviously, I missed a couple of steps. I changed the preferences to mm, but Ucam stayed in inches. EDIT I got that dialed in
Awesome, Yeah I just hit tab key after selecting the tool then enter a depth % ( 5 in this example ) followed by hitting the enter key.. Say your materiel is 6.35mm (1/4") thick 5% would make your cut 0.3175mm deep. I already had camotics loaded and the file saved. I just switched my open windows as I did not need to save the file twice. Correct, The green arrow icon exports your G-code. One of the things I find really useful with SketchuCam is how it provides detailed descriptions of what each item/line/tool/ ect. does just by hovering over it. I find this helpful when I don't know what setting does what.
Question: When it saves the file the its called in my case pitzer3d2.cnc there doesn't appear to be any other option. When I go into CAMotics its doesn't see that file. I renamed the file to .ngc But it doesn't come up like your demo. The gcode looks like this: So I am still missing something. % (Generated by SketchUcam V1.4b-8c2e) (File: pitzer3d2.skp) (Bit diameter: 3.200000mm) (Feed rate: 1000.000000mm/min) (Plunge Feed rate: 40.000000mm/min) (Material Thickness: 6.350000mm) (Material length: 300.000000mm X width: 300.00) (0000mm) (Overhead Gantry: true) (RAMPING at 4.0 degrees) (Plunge Depth first) (Optimization is ON) (www.PhlatBoyz.com) (Loaded profile DemoSettings) G90 G21 G49 G17 F40 M3 S16000 G00 Z5.000 G00 X0 Y0 (home) M05 M30 %
The Above G-code only seems to lower and raise your endmill once. Are you selecting the geometry to be cut as can be seen in the video at 1:16 ? Afterwards the lines should go from blue ( selected ) to green ( indicating a center line operation has been applied to that geometry ) . I tend to save my output from sketchup/cam as filename.gcode but .cnc / .nc They all seem to work. Camotics will open them all; You can use the drop down menu and select "all files" to get the .cnc extension files to show. They should all work just fine. It is just a text file. The G-code file should look something like this. Code: % (Generated by SketchUcam V1.4a-7e8d3) (Bit diameter: 3.175mm) (Feed rate: 1000.000mm/min) (Plunge Feed rate: 40.000mm/min) (Material Thickness: 6.350mm) (Material length: 300.000mm X width: 300.000mm) (Overhead Gantry: true) (RAMPING at 4.0 degrees) (Plunge Depth first) (Optimization is ON) (www.PhlatBoyz.com) (Demo Engraving File) G90 G21 G49 G17 M3 S16000 G00 Z5.000 X7.502 Y15.004 G00 Z0.200 G01 X20.005 Y15.004 Z-0.059 F40 X7.502 Y15.004 Z-0.318 X20.005 F1000 X20.943 Y15.191 X21.755 Y15.754 X22.318 Y16.567 X22.506 Y17.504 Y22.506 X22.318 Y23.443 X21.755 Y24.256 X20.943 Y24.818 X20.005 Y25.006 X7.502 Y15.004 G00 Z5.000 X20.005 Y10.002 G00 Z0.200 G01 X7.502 Y10.002 Z-0.059 F40 X20.005 Y10.002 Z-0.318 X7.502 F1000 Y2.500 X7.314 Y1.563 X6.752 Y0.750 X5.939 Y0.188 X5.001 Y0.000 X4.063 Y0.175 X3.251 Y0.700 X2.688 Y1.500 X2.501 Y2.500 Y27.507 X2.688 Y28.444 X3.251 Y29.257 X4.063 Y29.820 X5.001 Y30.007 X20.005 X21.458 Y29.867 X22.818 Y29.445 X24.084 Y28.741 X25.256 Y27.757 X26.241 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Ok, I am missing something. I do the centerline button, go to the depth amount and change it to 5%, when I then click on the blue "name" it turns to black, not green.
hmm, It is not supposed to do that. Going from blue to black means the geometry has been deselected. As long as I click on the selected geometry ( blue lines ) after choosing "center cut" and setting my depth. I have not had it deselect on me before. @David the swarfer is there a easier way to go from text to engraving ? Or any idea why his selected geometry deselects instead of applies a center cut?
Ok, I apparently, was clicking in the wrong spot. I now have the code like you have. When loaded into CAMotics I see the "work" and the tool is at 0,0. The question is other than seeing the simulation, what does CAMotics do for me. It's already in gcode and will run on my machine? I haven't done it yet, but I assume that I can take this/any ngc file put on a flashdrive and insert into the machine and Bcnc will execute it?
Good deal, Glad to see you have it worked out. Camotics is primarily a g-code viewer and simulator. This is very handy for reviewing your code prior to running it; particularly new g-code. Taking 5min to Simulate a run of a job in camotics is a whole lot cheaper then end mills / stock material. Once you have created your g-code you can then place it on your usb and run it with bcnc. I would advise against running any G-code not created your self! While using a cad file someone has provided does not pose a particular concern as you will do your own cam setup. Running someone else G-code can have disastrous effects. Even if the machines are 100% the same. A difference in material , endmill selection, work holding, speeds and feeds ect. can ruin a good day. Reviewing the top portion of a g-code file can minimize this as you can see from my above post. It provides details one could use to recreate my demo setup.
did you explode the text? it must be exploded before you can set it to be a cut line with the CenterLine tool EDIT: nevermind, I see you got it sorted. Please Read the Help/Manual -> big blue question mark in the toolbar. and watch this... and maybe some of it's friends on my youtube channel.
I have been and will continue to watch You Tubes. There is a lot of good info, eventually it starts to make sense.
Here is a quick and dirty wrong way to make something you can carve with Fengrave: If you want text, type it in the font and size you want it in a Word, Word perfect, or Libre Office document. Print it out. Scan it as a bitmap. Load bitmap into F-engrave and choose the size you want it carved. Done. This is just something stupid I did as a joke for a friendly little salmon fishing trip a bunch of friends and I did at Dismal Nitch (Lewis and Clark were obviously sick of rain by the time they got there) on the Columbia river. It took all of about 5 minutes once I found the right clip art online. I set the page to landscape and dropped and sized the images into the Libre Office document. I may have used the "trace bitmap" function in Inkscape on the images first, but it is not necessary. I printed it out and scanned it as a bitmap. Then carved with F-engrave using the v-bit function. This is the v-carved version for the plaque.
I duplicated Kyo's sample and tried it. While it worked, I realized that I need to pay attention to which tool is used and the depth that I tell it to cut. As well as the font and the font size and spacing. So like a lot of things, there is a learning curve.
This would make a great beginner's project over in the Projects tab. Quick start and easy for a beginner.
I thought about that, but I got the two images from two seperate places and rather than having to adjust their respective canvas sizes to scale them to the size I wanted in the Gimp (or other photo software) to make one image, I did what seemed easiest to me at the time. I plan to try your suggestion on the next one I do since it is a single image.
Being a TOTAL newbie and watching every youtube that I can find, one thing that pops up to me, its difficult for a wizard to make a beginner tutorial because, the wizard doesn't understand how beginner, a beginner really is. He subconsciously assumes that the beginner understands more than he can. So you wizards please force yourself to assume that we newbies are retarded, BUT we really want to learn, so be patience with us. MaryD has it right the more beginner videos you have on the site the more beginners will feel that they can do it too. Which in the end results in them becoming wizards.
I figured you did this because of multiple images/sources. My comment was more for clarity to readers who haven't tried F Engrave rather than a direct response to you.
