Another plasma component...

islander261 wrote: Rod

Sorry my post doesn't have drilling support because I don't need it, easy to put back in.

John

No its alright. I actually tried your post because I was not sure after all my hacking I might have broken the centre punch but fortunately it worked.

I think the bigger concern for engineering work is not having the kerf width to set the tool offset. Hopefully as we deal with the tool changing stuff, we find a way to send this back to the gcode without having to record it in the post.

Phill, enjoy whatever you are doing.

What are you guys using for cam softwhere?

Inkscape with included gcodetools, modified gcodetools to output no Z axis data, removed the probing stuff, set feed to 2000mm/m, save and close.
Open in Linuxcnc without editing anything.

JTknives wrote: What are you guys using for cam softwhere?

Sheetcam, very well priced, runs on Windows and Linux. John has posted a plasmac compatible post in the last few days on this thread. I have another post processor for it that needs cleaning up that also includes a drill tool so you can spot holes for subsequent drilling. The free version is enough to get you going, its limited by the number of lines it will output (but enough for a simple part). Its a very powerful tool.

Tommy

Having used Inkscape and Gcodetools in the past I think you have left out quite a few (not too well documented) steps to get from a drawing to Gcode. It gets much harder when you want to cut other than simple shapes. Inkscape and Gcodetools are certainly a workable solution and the price is right if you have the time to fool with them. I still use Inkscape as my main graphic design tool. Nesting and multiple tools can be done but you will need to be an Inkscape and Gcodetools expert to make it work, and I think Tommy is the only person I have heard claim success doing it (please make us a video showing the process with nontrivial parts). When I used it exclusively I would CAM each part separately and then hand build nested Gcode to run. For those conversant in Python the code is right there to make it work the way you want it to. Gcodetools does a much better job of converting the .svg native Bezier curves to linked circular arcs than SheetCam does.

I happen to use SheetCam almost daily. For the price it works pretty good though unfortunately the Windows version is much better at importing .svg files. Not a big deal if you are mostly working with engineering stuff because you can then use .dxf files for input. Some times I will even run it under Windows to import the artwork and save the job file and reopen it later under linux. The real win for me is the easy nesting of parts because I only cut full sheets to avoid having to inventory drops. I am sure I paid for the program the first week I had it in saved time and material. The post processors are written in the Lua scripting language and are quite easy to modify once you play with it a bit. It comes with PPs for many different machines. Most users here do use their own custom PP that suits the features of their machine and workflow.

John