CamBam

[Derek Eggers]

Hi CNC'ers 

I've been playing with CamBam and so far I like it.  I recommend playing with if if you're interested.  It was able to import 2D cad data exported as DXF from Rhino into CamBam and generate cut-lines and G-Code that works (kind of) on our machine.  In one of the files the parts spanned a 4x8 area so I tried that on the table. I scaled the part down to 0.1 of the original size but to my surprise it was still way to big for the table. Scaling it to .01 let me run a file without hitting the limits.  I noticed that the g-code has an instruction to go in the x dimension of 16.0000 something.  When I manually ran the machine from one side to the other of the x dimension it ranges about 1.6. .....so it looks like I may need to make some adjustments on the g-code post processor that I'm using.  Fortunately there are a lot of settings to fiddle with so I'm confident that we can make progress soon.  I'm pretty sure I had my model, and the post processor set to inches..  

I've loaded CamBam on the PC at the CNC machine.  It gives us 40 "free" tries before we have to pay. ....so I left it running.  I think it rolls the counter each time the program launches.  Since we don't use that machine for much else I guess we can leave it running for a while.  If it works as well as I think it will, $150 is a terrific price.  ...and I still want to find a way to get VisualCam or RhinoCam.

-Derek

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Derek Eggers

[David Hempy]

Exciting!  Can't wait to see it.

I'm also thinking about taking Alibre for a spin.  Looks like its claim to fame is heavy parametric design support, which sounds like a great design approach to me.  (Is that what Grasshopper does?)  They have a $200 CAD version that is probably plenty useful for us.

-dave