madCAM Users

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael R. Turner on August 5, 2009 at 8:37pm

Hi Denny,

Yes I use it in production, but I have never had a need for canned cycles. I use it for 3d wood carving and not a lot of need for cycles on my product. I can tell you that Joakim is very dedicated to making Madcam better and better because I have seen him add features that most folks would not have considered a need except for a few. He considered the few and it meant a lot to those.

Mike

Permalink Reply by Dan on August 6, 2009 at 2:36am

Hi Denny,

I use MadCam too. We drip feed using MultiDNC for our 3-axis machines so this has never been a problem for us. I would suggest you keep working with it for a bit. I found that the more you use it the more you will come to realize what a capable program it is. Kind of like Rhino itself. The first time I ever saw Rhino (summer of 2000) I didn't think it was a very serious program. But as I worked with the evaluation version I realized that there was way more there than I first thought.

Dan

Permalink Reply by Denny Butler on August 19, 2010 at 10:52pm

Hi Dan,

I went back and edited the Haas post processor, and now I get rapids. Also got it to turn the coolant on and off correctly, and it now codes feed numbers with a decimal, which is crucial to the Haas controller.

No canned cycles, as I noted above, so I am using my old 2d program for 2-axis code, and madcam for 3-axis.

Question: is there no arc interpolation? I can make line-segment code all day, but arc interpolation would reduce file size dramatically. Not complaining, it works well for the price.

Is code size really a non-issue? I end up creating a separate file for each tool because I am still using the floppy-drive networking. I know, the floppy is dead.

Permalink Reply by Dan on September 3, 2010 at 3:08am

Hi Denny,

Arc interpolation is on the to-do list for development, as is canned drilling cycles. Currently Joakim is busy with writing the core code for madCam 5, but these features are planned for the future. You may have noticed the inactive options for drilling. This is the beginning of the drilling cycles. The concept of this will be that you define your cycle in the post, and when you select the appropriate option, the code will include your cycle, as you defined it.

As for the floppy drive, what's a floppy drive? ;-)

Seriously, in this age of 1TB hard drives, using a floppy drive is very outdated. You can buy 4Gb USB thumb drives for the cost of a burger and fries, so it might be worth thinking of retiring that old floppy drive.

Dan