Trying to fathom cambam

[John11668]

So am trying a few simple exercises in Cambam (nearly used up my 40 goes )
I selected a piece of stock (as a nameplate )
Then Super- imposed my house name onto it.
Selected to engrave it, put in a few settings , (4 passes at 0.2 mm each) and selected Mach 3 post processor and clicked to produce G code .
Seems to generate a decent toolpath so had a look at the G Code and copied it on to a stick and carted it off to the workshop to see the result .

Works Ok in Mach 3 mill and doesnt throw up any early error messages , even starts to cut letters, until it needs to raise the tool and move at which point it goes off into a large anticlockwise arc . It wants to do this every time so the result is slow and the arcs would take the head way off table.

So what do I need to do to get this going as it should ????

[m_c]

I'm going to guess you've got your arcs the wrong way round.

IIRC you can change the direction of G02/03 in Mach settings, or there should be a setting in cambam.

[John11668]

I'm going to guess you've got your arcs the wrong way round.

IIRC you can change the direction of G02/03 in Mach settings, or there should be a setting in cambam.

I suspect you may be correct MC. but it is cambam that has chosen the moves, although the tool paths look OK in cambam so must be the translation int Mach 3.

Used The Mach3 post processor and but seems to go haywire in the translation to Mach 3. Cant see any settings in M3 to reverse the arcs and dont feel like editing manually as there must be a hundred lines to look out and change and some of the G03 lines may be correct

[Kitwn]

I'm not familiar with Mach3 so cannot offer help there. One test would be to change the postprocessor in CamBam to the 'generic' option and see if that makes a difference. It might at least help point to where the issue is.

Have you looked on the CamBam forum? It's a very active universe and there will be plenty of people with CamBam/Mach3 experience.

EDIT: Just had a look and this might help...
https://cambamcnc.com/forum/index.ph...65142#msg65142

Kit

[John11668]

Thanks guys
Changing the General config setttings in Mach 3 IJ to incremental from absolute seems to have done the trick
I do remember now having to do the same on a previous piece . Awfully complicated !!!!

[EddyCurrent]

Commonly known as "crop circles", do a search on the CamBam forum for that term to get more info.

[John11668]

I can understand that term Eddy current.
If I ever manage to get registered on cambam forum I will do just that