Sweet, still, keep that little tickbox in mind if your run into issues. Making things look good, and making things work fast, is kinda exclusive to each other sometimes (; Not needing to calculate the tool width preview saves about 80% of the computing (; and will help with larger/complex jobs
very good points...I will get it down one of these days...nothing like trial by fire! Its why I bought cheap bits starting out lol
@Peter Van Der Walt So quick question. In that file I sent you, how would I select just that area where the lettering is to be pocket milled to leave the lettering raised? When I click on the outer circle of that lettering pocket it automatically selects everything inside of that. Is there a way to select just that pocket that the letters are in? As far as I can tell it only lets me select just the lines.
No no. It select whatever line you select. It doesnt autoselect anything else (except when you are in the MOVE tool) Whatever is "red" forms part of the toolpath, so lets simplify the explanation. Take the letter A. It consists of the outside shape, and triangle in the middle. Select BOTH, create a Pocket. it will now intelligently know to NOT pocket in the triangle, and draw a proper A. But if you just select the outline, it will happily chow away the triangle too. It only does what you tell it
Trying to guess what you wanted to make: If I select just this: (using the first circle out, and first cicle in as constraints for the pocket, the next line in will be the letters, thus subtracted from the geometry, and the next line in from that would be the inside bits of letters like O, D, etc which will in turn be added to the geometry and thus milled (odd/even polyfill standard: Javascript Clipper / Wiki / documentation) the resulting pocket op is this: That will mill away the green bits so letters will be proud of the bottom of the pocket
okay got it! Didnt realize I had to select each letter too...but that makes sense. Definitely appreciate all the help!
Is there a recommended browser to use the CAM software in? I am using Chrome and the webpage keeps crashing. I will try it on another computer this weekend to see if I have the same issue.
Chrome is best Traced bitmaps arent the best format, as each pixel almost creates a line segment. Use a DXF (R14 Polyline) or SVG
I dont know what the deal is, but any recommendations besides the OBC? I'm pretty fed up with it. Vcarve? Fusion? OBC does the same thing no matter what computer I am on. The page goes blank or just locks up. Sometimes it takes 5 mins to do a pocket. It can't actually take that long. I tried it with a .svg file as well. I have disabled the tool width preview, tool path, nothing helps. Ive downloaded different browsers. My desktop at home is built pretty well as it was built for gaming. I thought maybe something on my laptop(which is new and pretty powerful also to run solidworks) didnt agree with it, but thats not the case. I need to find another solution because this wont work.
So it took about 10-15 mins to generate the tool path for the pocket where the letters are using a 1/4" bit. This cant be normal to take that long right?
Get this about 90% of the time, then i lose whatever work I have done. I have literally spent 2 days trying to get this logo done in OBC and have nothing to show for it.
Sure, Fusion360, Vectric, CAMBAM, Meshcam, many many options. Go for what fits your workflow. Also checkout SketchuCAM
Ill look into those thanks. Does nobody else have this issue with OBC? Pretty disappointed it isnt working at all for me. Feel like I was getting the hang of it and is simple to use. Is 10 minute calculation time normal? Cant imagine it is and what it would be like if I was actually doing something complex.
It runs in the browser, so of course its a little slower than a desktop app. I dont see 10min calculations myself, those demo screenshots above took a couple minutes to make for you and I have a 7 year old I5-3470, win7, 8gb ram, with a 10 year old Geforce 210 in it. I deliberately use old hardware to code on so I know it runs on slow PCs. Its all about the quality of the input artwork. Data is data. Load a nice clean DXF and the application has good data to quickly process. Load extraneous data (sadly bitmaps tracing will always have as pixels doesnt make for continuous lines like Vector graphics does) that isnt meant for CNCing, and of course it has to spend a lot of cpu time figuring it all out. Your job as far as i can tell is not complex at all, i've used CAM for way bigger cuts like these: (except the stand, all the rest ran through CAM) Projects from Peter Van Der Walt | OpenBuilds Of coarse the codebase is always maturing too, just last week 3D viewer in CONTROL sped up by a factor of about 200, so too for CAM there is some more upcoming optimisation work on the todo list (webworkers etc)
Gotcha. Yeah I dont know what the deal is. I havent had luck with either of the files I have tried working with. The logo that you worked on was professionally done and was sent to me as .svg, .jpg, and .pdf. I liked Vcarve a lot but when I was ready to export to gcode the trial version doesnt let you export to any other file type so its basically useless, and I am not wanting to pay for something quite yet. I did the 1yr trial of fusion 360 so I will try that next and some of the other ones I have seen mentioned. Also, nice job on those projects!
I am busy adding some enhancements to the code, but for the next day or two I am tasked with something else, but will try and get improved versions of the toolpath processors live by mid to end of next week for you
Awesome! I'll keep an eye out! On the bright side I am experimenting with pretty much every other free program out there to see what I like and don't like. So far Vcarve and OBC were the easiest to use, Vcarve isnt actually free. Been working in F360, but on struggle bus with creating toolpaths, downloaded Easel, but it is limited with no V carving, trying Carbide Create out tonight and have downloaded CAMBAM
Well looks like Carbide Create is the winner at the moment. Took me a few minutes to make the gcode and open in the OB control software
Crashes and hangs. I've been giving OBCam a try on SVGs and frankly, found it frustrating. Multiple crashes and hangs just clicking on a path in an opened SVG. So, I simplified the SVG down to 16 paths. OBCam opened it and allowed me to select paths and add toolpaths. Progress! However, when I tried to generate GCode I got an error message that said something about a missing index. It was only on the screen for a few seconds so I could be a little wrong on the exact wording. I attached the svg file. There are basically 4 identical paths that are transformed 3 times. The page never crashed but is still spinning "generating" GCode 30 minutes later. Also, assuming you guys will fix that bug or have a workaround, is there a way to scale an SVG in OBCam? [Edit] I reproduced the error. Here's a screen shot. [/Edit]
Hi Phil, I was able to generate a G-code file using your svg. posted Turned out a bit weird with so many rapids, but it worked easy for me, no crashes. What PC spec, OS, Browser are you running? maybe its a compatibility thing? cheers Gary
Browser is Chrome Version 76.0.3809.100 (Official Build) (64-bit) see photo for PC/Win 10 details. Moderately recent with lots of memory.
Gary, try this one. It hangs the OBCam page. It was just a test to see what OBCam would do. I'd need to rework it to make it usable but OBCam shouldn't hang on it. I also uploaded what it should look like. By the way, I'm using F-Engrave to generate GCode for these Celtic Knots but it generates huge numbers of unnecessary moves and ridiculously long run times. The vector art uses Beziers which I think the SVG export turns into short segments and thus a lot of rapids. Not sure what to do about that. Might redraw with sketchucam using arcs. Need to investigate F360, if they ever get my account fixed (long story). This should be a very small number of G01s and a fast run time.
Phil, I redid the SVG file using your png, in inkscape. attached The svg file you posted doesn't work out, i even tried it in Estlcam. Estlcam does svg's and complex shapes very well. the one you posted looks like this New svg I did ..
