On Sunday 24 March 2013 07:24:37 JohnBannister did opine: > BlenderCam is a program which will convert blender 3d directly to GCode > it is still in development and has quite a steep learning curve if you > haven't used blender before. It will import stl files so can convert > FreeCam files. If anyone tries it watch out for the Blendercam > standard units are meters so 50mm in freecad becomes 50mts so the > dimensions need to be Changed in BlenderCam and the top of the part > needs to be zero on the z axis.
Thats fixable in the gcode with an editor, its text. > I made a short video of the out line of the process > http://youtu.be/36GMWamk2MQ > It's a bit slow as the sampling is .2mm by .2mm (can be changed) but the > program was designed for carving. Thanks for the heads up on that. I've /not/ mastered freecad yet. And this is the first time I've heard of blendercam. I'll google for it. Thanks. > Whats potrace? potrace, by Peter Selinger, takes a bitmap image in several formats as input, in this case a 1 bit deep .pnm, and generates a smoothed, scalable vector .eps file thats typically 1% to 5% of the size of the src image. Then in just a few seconds, pstoedit gave me an outline trace in GCode that was in the 100 line range for size. Then I did a global swap of X & Y to rotate it to the angle the part is already mounted in the vice, adjusted the scale to suit, trimmed some wibbles out of the src scan & added a while loop construction so it could cut the full depth with a small 1/16" carbide mill. All without throwing my machine 850 megs into swap with a failed PyCAM run that took over an hour to fail. Its called efficiency. And doing this part in brass makes it fit nicely into the BP scene since the trigger guard loop is also carved from that same .375" thick brass bar. Some details yet to be incorporated, like tool comp for climb cutting. Minor stuff, I just need to look up the proper gcodes to do it & add them to the .ngc file. Your tight fit, 100% fine in that red oak, even desirable, is an artifact of the scan process, leaving teeny little ridges lining the bearing pocket. The tradeoff here is that the vector scan and pstoedit doing gcode output are scaled to arbitrary size, allowing things to be adjusted by scale factors in the gcode to get any arbitrary size. For a 28mm bearing pocket, I probably would have written a g2 or g3 loop, which would have (and did when I last used it), cut pair of near perfect bearing pockets in a pair of alu blocks when I made the new z axis drive for my HF micromill. However, I'll admit also to spending half a day fine tuning the backlash comp to get rid of the reversal artifacts at the ends of the tables travels. :) I haven't gotten around to putting ball screws in the mill, yet. But if I don't fall over first, (I am 78 & a type 2 diabetic) a new z carriage sled several inches longer is in order, probably driven with a 16mm ball screw, And a pair of 8mm's to move the tables. I have to make cages for those 8mm nuts, but that's doable. I did it once already for my mini-lathe. 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) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! My views <http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml> Your boss climbed the corporate ladder, wrong by wrong. I was taught to respect my elders, but its getting harder and harder to find any... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
