Start point placement

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David_Lelen01
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Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:18 pm
Location: South Carolina, USA
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Start point placement

Post by David_Lelen01 »

Hey Les, just wondering of you have a easy way (other than manually moving) to place start points on the opposite side of the contour?
StartpointLocation.PNG
StartpointLocation.PNG (186.7 KiB) Viewed 1030 times
As you can see in the screenshot, sheetcam is placing the start points on the leading side of the contour in the direction of rapids. The problem here is sometimes the cutout twists sideways and does not fall all the way out and the machine rapids into the piece that is sticking up and crashes. If the start point was on the opposite side of the contour, as how i placed the first few, this would not happen and i would not have to use a negative overcut to tab them and then not waste hours poking out all those dang little squares.

Any thoughts how to do this optimization automatically?
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Les Newell
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Re: Start point placement

Post by Les Newell »

There isn't anything like that in the current SheetCam. I lik ethe idea but it's likely to be tricky to implement. If you move the start point it may change the optimum cut order. This in turn could mean you now need to move the start point again to allow for the new cut order. It could easily end up going around in circles trying to find a solution. There are ways around problems like this but it's something that needs to be approached with care.
David_Lelen01
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Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:18 pm
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Re: Start point placement

Post by David_Lelen01 »

I think it would be an amazing addition to sheetcam. After I spent the time to manually place all those points this morning, all 6 sheets cut perfectly without a single crash and every little square fell out when we picked the sheet up.

Could you perhaps limit the number of times the cutpath is evaluated after a single user action? I see what you mean it could potentially form a perpetual loop of optimizing the paths, but just limit it to 5, 10, etc. optimization attempts until the user changes another parameter?
Jolbas
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Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2019 8:59 am

Re: Start point placement

Post by Jolbas »

Isn't it possible to increase the safe height in your case? Or is it at maximum already?
David_Lelen01
Posts: 452
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:18 pm
Location: South Carolina, USA
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Re: Start point placement

Post by David_Lelen01 »

Isn't it possible to increase the safe height in your case? Or is it at maximum already?
Unfortunately that will not solve the problem. This is a production laser machine, the movements are optimized for speed of processing. The head retracts as the XY rapids instead of the head retracting then the XY moves. It is dangerous and much more prone to crashing, but significantly reduces processing time with a lot of pierces.
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