Plasma cutting a line

General
1

If you have a line in your drawing, such as a bend relief line, or just an artistic line, how do you get Sheetcam (7.x) to cut the line without a lead-in and without moving back-and forth?

I tried making a bend relief line the same width as the kerf for the tool selected, but it still starts mid-way through the line and runs to one end and back to the other and back to the start point leaving an ugly mark where it starts and ends.

I’ve seen these kinds of lines done with Torchmate, and I imagine I’m just overlooking something in the tool - I have no problem moving lines to a different layer if needed. When I make them too small Sheetcam tells me they are too small and will not cut them, but when I make them the kerf-width it does what I described above.

Thanks.

2

I just draw a line in my cad program and set SheetCam to not offset open paths and not add a lead in. Sounds like you’re doing the same thing, so I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be working.

3

The “back-and forth” motion sounds like you are drawing a very narrow rectangle instead of a single line. A rectangle is a closed shape and sheetcam will use a leadin and make a round trip around the shape (contour). A line on the other hand is an open shape, the ends don’t meet, thus sheetcam doesn’t make a round trip and the toolpath is as @djreiswig describes it.

In your CAD program, to draw line, make sure the ‘Line’ tool is selected, not some other tool.