#garfield Logs

Oct 19 2018

09:40 AM furrywolf: looking on ebay, it'd be >$400 just for the rack and pinion if I use actual rack... not happening.
09:44 AM furrywolf: gearboxes are also annoyingly expensive
09:44 AM furrywolf: I think a kludgey cable loop and living with a floppy leadscrew is the most likely outcome of this research. heh.
07:38 PM furrywolf: poking at wire rope, 3/16" is too thick. 1/8 or 3mm is better.
08:01 PM Tom_L: i'd try moving the screw to the center, drive the nut instead of the screw since it's so long and attach cables to both sides of both sides in a figure 8 somehow
08:01 PM Tom_L: would take some rework but might make it alot more solid
08:29 PM furrywolf: I don't want anything under the table, since I plan on using it for plasma as well, and anything under it will be most immediately trashed.
08:32 PM furrywolf: grrrrr. why is working cad software so fucking hard?
08:33 PM furrywolf: I'm not trying to design jet engines or anything... but I can't find anything that can even make a simple fucking part!
08:35 PM furrywolf: so far, the most-functional I've found is heekscad, and it crashes when exiting, adding text, or (prior to my fixing it), generating g-code.
09:19 PM Tom_L: what are you trying to make?
09:19 PM Tom_L: i use sw and catia for most 3d stuff
09:20 PM Tom_L: what's a good led flashlight nowdays?
09:20 PM furrywolf: right now, a simple engraved thing. a raised rectangular border, milled on the outside, pocket on the inside, with raised text within it.
09:20 PM furrywolf: something that could be done on a fucking pantograph
09:21 PM Tom_L: i'm not sure what guys are using for 3d, for 2.5d sheetcam is one
09:21 PM furrywolf: so far, the only program I've yet managed to get a working toolpath from is heekscnc... and it crashes when trying to add text. and other times. and sucks in general.
09:22 PM furrywolf: sheetcam is very non-free
09:22 PM Tom_L: i've no idea...
09:22 PM Tom_L: i've got my own cad cam stuff
09:22 PM Tom_L: just going off what i hear
09:22 PM Tom_L: freecad might be worth a look
09:22 PM furrywolf: what working open-source cad/cam software have you found?
09:22 PM furrywolf: freecad is worthless.
09:23 PM Tom_L: also fusion 360 is free to hobbyists
09:23 PM furrywolf: it has lots of features... some things there's a hundred ways to do... like segfault. because that's what it does if you fucking use ANY of them.
09:23 PM furrywolf: I've never managed to get more than 5 minutes of actual designing out of it before it crashes.
09:24 PM furrywolf: isn't fusion360 internet-dependent and windows-only?
09:24 PM Tom_L: yes
09:24 PM furrywolf: so, useless.
09:24 PM Tom_L: everything is going to cloud based
09:25 PM furrywolf: at home I have low-speed internet, at the shop I have no internet whatsoever, and windows is never touching anything I have to actually use.
09:25 PM Tom_L: i design in solidworks or catia and port it over to my old cad cam to post it
09:25 PM Tom_L: i don't have to but it's easier for me to draw in catia
09:26 PM Tom_L: i use smartcam for my post
09:26 PM furrywolf: solidworks is expensive and windows-only... I don't know anything about catia. googling now.
09:26 PM Tom_L: but i got it like 25-30 yrs ago
09:26 PM Tom_L: catia is out of your price range
09:26 PM Tom_L: it's for large companies
09:26 PM Tom_L: like 75k per seat
09:26 PM furrywolf: anything more expensive that a hamburger is out of my price range these days.
09:26 PM furrywolf: than
09:27 PM Tom_L: solidworks and catia are both dassault systems
09:28 PM Tom_L: i took a couple classes for catia
09:28 PM Tom_L: my kids took more than i have
09:28 PM Tom_L: so i've got a student copy of it
09:29 PM Tom_L: i'd be in the same boat if i didn't already have them
09:29 PM Tom_L: and i bought smartcam years ago to help a friend that had a cnc shop
09:29 PM Tom_L: paid for itself in the first year
09:30 PM Tom_L: now i just use it for my small mill
09:30 PM Tom_L: so it's ancient software but it still does full 3d
09:30 PM Tom_L: in fact i've still got a DOS version of it
09:31 PM Tom_L: bobcam? maybe... i forget
09:32 PM Tom_L: i installed one of them for a while to help a guy in linuxcnc
09:32 PM Tom_L: it may have been bobcam i forget
09:32 PM Tom_L: there's virtually nothing 3d for linux
09:36 PM furrywolf: for this current project, I really only need 2.5d... I can manually set a depth for the pocketing operation. the final product only needs to have two levels.
09:36 PM furrywolf: but I can't even find anything that can do that.
09:37 PM Tom_L: plugin for inkscape
09:37 PM furrywolf: tried the inkscape cam plugin a while ago, couldn't get working toolpaths.
09:38 PM Tom_L: cambam... that was it
09:38 PM Tom_L: but i think it's also windows
09:39 PM Tom_L: not bobcam
09:42 PM Tom_L: f-engrave
09:42 PM Tom_L: maybe
09:44 PM Tom_itx: http://www.scorchworks.com/Fengrave/fengrave.html
09:44 PM furrywolf: I want raised text. is it smart enough to do actual pocketing operations?
09:44 PM Tom_L: you'll have to check, i've not used it just heard it works
09:45 PM Tom_L: i think it will do pockets
09:46 PM Tom_L: imports dxf
09:46 PM furrywolf: I don't see any examples of it doing a pocketing operation as would be needed to give raised text...
09:50 PM Tom_L: the docs show some plaques that have 'pocket' cutouts around the perimeter
09:51 PM Tom_L: if you imported a dxf or possibly using a font maybe you can specify the inside or outside border to cut
09:51 PM Tom_L: i'm not sure
09:53 PM Tom_itx: To make the second carving shown at the beginning of this document two settings need to be adjusted. First the normals of the image need to be flipped (in the v-carve settings window). This changes the side of the image that gets carved so that the white gets carve instead of the black in the image.
09:53 PM Tom_L: in the docs
09:54 PM Tom_itx: http://www.scorchworks.com/Fengrave/F-engrave_tutorial.htm
09:55 PM Tom_L: i know a guy downloaded a harley logo and cut it with little effort
09:57 PM furrywolf: best I can tell reading the manual is maybe if you only do a "cleanup" pass without an engraving pass, maybe?
09:57 PM furrywolf: it's not documented as doing such, that I can find...
09:58 PM Tom_L: i know several guys have used it just not me
10:01 PM furrywolf: urgh, I overate and I blame shitty cad software. being pissed off and angry makes me hungry.
10:02 PM Tom_L: heh
10:11 PM furrywolf: ... it comes with a .bat file to install it?
10:11 PM Tom_L: i dunno
10:11 PM Tom_L: i've never tried it
10:12 PM Tom_L: just know several ppl have used it successfully
10:17 PM Tom_L: that's if you run it under windows
10:17 PM Tom_L: i think
10:20 PM Tom_L: just run the .py file in linux i guess
10:20 PM furrywolf: yeah, I figured that out... dealing with dependencies now.
10:21 PM Tom_L: i've got my opinions about both OS's :)
10:21 PM furrywolf: I tracked it down to how it was combining things... when things are close together, it takes overly long to decide where they meet. I don't remember exactly what it was doing (this was a while ago).
10:21 PM furrywolf: grr, wrong window
10:21 PM Tom_L: i'll use whatever get's it done...
10:23 PM furrywolf: I'm poking at f-engrave now... it's not a general purpose cad/cam at all, but it might get this specific project done.
10:23 PM furrywolf: grr, wrong window, again
10:23 PM * furrywolf is having too many conversations at once, AND trying to use software...
10:24 PM furrywolf: I can't seem to make it do just pocketing without v-carving... I guess I can try fucking with a 0-length cutter or something...
10:25 PM furrywolf: what the fuck. a simple v-carve is estimating it's going to take SEVENTEEN MINUTES to compute?
10:27 PM furrywolf: I can only do 4 tries/hour to see if I can make it do what I want?
10:27 PM furrywolf: god I fucking despise python.
10:28 PM furrywolf: let's have a language that's shit to code, and slower than even java!
10:31 PM furrywolf: aaaand it just fucking failed, drawing a toolpath that goes randomly around in giant circles around the screen.
10:31 PM furrywolf: overlapping other parts of the part
10:33 PM furrywolf: so not only is it slow, it has bugs that prevent it from working.
10:34 PM furrywolf: it was doing well, then started cutting big circles randomly up against the edge of what it should have been cutting. like the algorithm jumped to the wrong side of the line or such.
10:35 PM furrywolf: and computed utterly wrong results
10:36 PM furrywolf: aaaaand now it's using 100% cpu, doing nothing, and has -1.0 minutes remaining.
10:44 PM Tom_L: was the line closed or was there a gap?
10:45 PM Tom_L: sounds like you're having fun for sure..
10:45 PM furrywolf: it shouldn't matter. lines can be random, just like their polsi insignia thing.
10:45 PM furrywolf: polski
10:50 PM furrywolf: it's doing better with a simpler test input
10:52 PM furrywolf: I can't tell it I don't want to v-cut, but if I set the maximum v-cut depth to a tenth (.0001"), it essentially does nothing, and then will compute a pocketing operation with a straight bit.
11:00 PM Tom_L: hope you can get it to work for what you need
11:35 PM furrywolf: I've reached the limit of what I can figure out with f-engrave without doing some test cuts.
11:44 PM furrywolf: bbl, wolfy bedtime