On Tuesday 23 March 2010, Bernhard Kubicek wrote: >camexpert is the "advanced" qcad, where you can export gcode. But it does >not support cutter radius compensation, nor pocketing by itself. >There is some optimization of paths; >Manually reordering of things is not working well for me.
And I tend to be fond of subroutines, but have trouble recognizing that something just might be better that way when I am trying to shrink and optimize my own stuff. One of the things that would be handy for me could be done as a subroutine, that of carving the access well in the north side (I'm right handed) of a gunstock butt section that goes with the 'thumbhole" style. That is basically a cone shape, laid well over on its side, but for artistic purposes and hand comfort, the 'lower' edge needs to be pulled down near the pistol grip, but maintain the straight line to the rear of the cutout too, the idea being that when the hand is in the grip, the back of the pistol should be pretty well centered on a line drawn thru the wrist back to the 2 bones in the arm, therefore transferring as much of the arms mass into the stock as practical. This effect can also have a quite noticeable effect on the perceived recoil with the larger calibers. The improved grip also turns my standing up with no support grouping at 100 meters from a pattern about 1/3 meter across, to one about 7 or 8 cm across. That will put venison in the freezer. ;-) I can deduce the shape of the curve on both ends, and could set it in a table, but emc doesn't have enough vars to hold the whole double set of xyz tables. Also, x needs to be dynamically adjusted so we don't waste a lot of time cutting air, or conversely, keeping the chuck itself out of the wood when approaching the pistol grip. Without a really long spindle nose, and a tilting post or spindle, reaching it all is a drill a hole & sand to shape operation, something I'd love to be able to do, and could if I ever built a gantry machine with a 54" x, 12" y & z and a spindle I can rotate on the y axis and an A table on the x axis, total of 5 axis. I suspect that some of the ultra modern looking bits of laminated wood I see on the net were carved with such a machine. At that point I'll be looking for today's version of the 50 year old B&D die grinder #8 for a spindle. Nice looooonngg nose shank, you could reach all the way up a flathead ford blocks exhaust port and polish around the exhaust valve stems with it. I actually think I could write some patterns that would sell in wood if I had the machine, cuz I already know what looks good. Or think I do. Every time I drag out the one I'm working on at the moment, it gets the Ooohs and Ahhhs that makes me feel good. Too bad we can't post pix here. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) The less time planning, the more time programming. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
