If you are watching them on You tube just keep your finger on the space bar and press it for pause then press it again for play
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I'd cut my teeth on the basic documentation just to get used to how the software works first, before worrying about the exotics....
http://www.cambam.info/doc/plus/cam/Basics.htm
Note that v1.0 is now preferred. There isn't much difference from the outside but when you come to add some of the very useful plug-ins in future many of them only work on 1.0.
I'm with Doddy on starting with the basics. Use the menu on the page he linked to for instructions. This is a good starter..
http://www.cambam.info/doc/plus/SimpleExample.htm
The site forum is also very good with lots of helpful people and a big archive. And help is always available here of course.
Kit
While I spend a few days (weeks) getting into Cam Bam I will put together a thread about the alterations to the compound table and my thinking in going this way.
Will start a new thread to avoid polluting this one further and hopefully will come back to this point when Cam Bam sinks in a bit
Don't be afraid to ask questions about CB if required. I don't claim to be an expert, but I've been using it to make things for a few years now.
Had a play today and managed to do a rudimentary drawing (keeping it simple ) Managed to create a toolpath and a bunch of G code on my office machine .
Then tried to email the Gcode to my workshop machine so i could try it out on Mach 3 .
What is the process. I can save a *.cd file . but cant seem to attach it to an email.
Cant copy and paste cos the code is tens of pages and i cant copy all at one go. What is the best way to send a Gcode file to another machine ?
Are there off the peg bits of code to play with while I am getting the hang of Bam Bam?
Gcode is nothing but text so you can save it with any extension your email will allow. .txt for example and change it to whatever MACH3 wants on arrival. If it's the file size that's the problem then try some simpler shapes! Even the Aztec Calendar at 400mm diameter is only 6MB and I've just had a look at my collected files for all sorts of projects and most of them are only a few tens of Killobytes with some (cutting out gears for wooden clocks as an example) still under 1MB.
Alternatively save each part of the machining as a separate file (right click on each machining operation in turn and click on 'Enable/Dissable MOP' to turn them on and off).
You can always attach a CamBam project file to a post here as a .zip file if you want us to have a look at the work in progress (You may also be able to cheat and simply change the file extension from .cb to .jpg or .zip as long as you tell us exactly what you've done, but I've never tried that in practice).
In practice I do as driftspin suggests, design everything on my desk computer and carry a USB stick with the Gcode to the dedicated machine computer.
Kit
Don't confuse the CAMBAM project (.cb) with the GCode. I'm doing this blind and haven't used CAMBAM for a while, so this might be a bit awry, but lets try...
When you define your graphic primitives, then create the machining operations to "do" the CAM, by this action you create a second branch in the "tree" on the far left of the CAMBAM window labeled "Machining", and under this "Part1", then the individual CAM operations. If you click on the "Machining" branch (this will set this for the whole project.... you can also, I think, do this under the "Part" branch - just depends on how much you want to automate the CAM generation), then under there there'll be an "Out File" - or something similar that you specify the path/filename that you want, then hit the menu option Machining/Create GCode File - that'll generate the G-Code and write this to the filename specified. As others have said - you can designate this as .txt or whatever you want.
Thanks guys
I managed to save the G code file onto a stick , carted it off to the workshop, and loaded g code directly into Mach 3 from the stick address (without copying elsewhere ) and all seemed to appear as required into the Mach 3 . So lookin good :encouragement:
Doesnt look like Cambam and Mach 3 speak the same dialect though !
So when I click start , the process begins and looks promising until it stops and I get I get an error message .
Says "Radius to end of arc differs from Radius to start (with block reference )
Block is G2 F800.0 X180.0 Z-0.0856 I-12.5717 J58.6681
No radius in there to trouble us , is there ????
And if i go to edit the .txt file come up with pages totally delineated load of code . Not a list , just pages of consecutive text, so finding the offending block to edit is nigh on impossible.
:sorrow: