sheetcam.com

I’m making dry runs on square tubing and pipe with a felt marker. A number of issues come up for me and any help would be appreciated!!

1. The Z axis always goes up - mach 3 runs through the tool path but I’m finding the z-axis is always going up at the pierce point and I’m not sure if this is a thc feature that needs disabling, or touch off feature that needs to be disabled? For now I would like to keep Z at the zeroed point in mach 3 throughout the entire tool path. Is there a way to do that? Or should I just install a floating head?

2. Mach 3 will always zero at the 0,0 area of the drawing, which means it will always go to the middle of the pipe/tube. Is there a way to zeroing mach 3 so that the starting end of the pipe will be displayed at 0,0?

3. The Mach 3 tool path display always looks distorted. For example a square tube will look like a pipe. Or the letters on a pipe don’t exactly match up to what is drawn on cad. This is mostly a minor issue since the tool path seems to be okay. Is there a way to have mach 3 display an image that reflects a work piece?

Thanks!

Paul

pdubbleyuh wrote: ↑Thu Jul 26, 2018 5:43 am 1. The Z axis always goes up - mach 3 runs through the tool path but I’m finding the z-axis is always going up at the pierce point and I’m not sure if this is a thc feature that needs disabling, or touch off feature that needs to be disabled? For now I would like to keep Z at the zeroed point in mach 3 throughout the entire tool path. Is there a way to do that? Or should I just install a floating head?

You could set the pierce height and cut height to 0. As you want to cut square tubing SheetCam needs to control the Z axis height depending on the tube angle so you can't just fix the Z height.

2. Mach 3 will always zero at the 0,0 area of the drawing, which means it will always go to the middle of the pipe/tube. Is there a way to zeroing mach 3 so that the starting end of the pipe will be displayed at 0,0?

It doesn't matter where you put 0,0 as long as both SheetCam and Mach3 agree. You can zero Mach3 wherever you want by moving to the point you want to use as zero and using one of the zero buttons.

3. The Mach 3 tool path display always looks distorted. For example a square tube will look like a pipe. Or the letters on a pipe don’t exactly match up to what is drawn on cad. This is mostly a minor issue since the tool path seems to be okay. Is there a way to have mach 3 display an image that reflects a work piece?

There isn't much you can do about that. Mach's preview doesn't really understand the rotary axis.

Thank you for the reply!

- Paul

Good morning to all.
Sorry to hyjak this thread, but I have a question regarding the dxf drawings. In the video on sheetcam rotary, the piece of shs shown, is depicted as a solid 3d item, which it is supposed to be. Now I have been given a solidworks, flattened out dxf and sheetcam wants to cut along one of the corners, because the dxf is a flat sheet item that will be bent up.
That is quite confusing even if I read it myself.
What I need to do is remove the 'cut' on two of the perimeter lines so it looks like the simulation on sheetcam rotary.
Any thoughts on this, those that have done rotary would have a workaround or an answer.
Thanks on advance

You need to load the dxf into a cad package and manually delete the seam lines so you just have the ends and any cutouts.

Good morning Les.
Just to make sure, there is no way that, that can be done in sheetcam?
Any cad package can do this? I have corel draw with dxf export (I know that it isn't a engineering drawing package), but to delete lines it should do that. I will try that for starters.

Thanks again