New member with a compliment for Dolphin

[BrianSP]

A new member here who is pleased to join the ranks of what seems to be a very sane , friendly and stable group. I am new to CNC machining and new to PM.

In my first post it is great to be able to pay a compliment to the folks at Dolphin for a job well done which will hopefully be even better in the future. The more I learn about PM (mainly CAM) the more I am impressed by its flexibility.

My first project with DCAM was to machine the ends of two pieces of "U" shaped aluminum extrusion (1.6"x 1" with 0.14 wall thickness) at an angle and then thin the walls (one part internally, the other externally) so that the two mating parts of the material could snap together with no projecting seam. This looked as though it would be a miserable basic G-code job including having to create 12 arcs in the process. With the flexibility of DCAM I was able to modify the Go-Around process to do all of the work and I only had to add a few pieces of basic G-code to join the Go-Arounds together. Great job.

Now a question. Once I had modified the G-code by hand I was outside of DCAM and I could not simulate the work so I had to single-step through the code on the mill. Is there any way of feeding raw G-code into the DCAM simulator (or has this been considered as a future addition). It would have been very useful capability for me.

Brian


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[andre-dolphin]

Hello Brian,

Thanks for the comments.

I'm afraid you can't use the simulator to show modifed GCodes, however, there is a free simulator here - it requires that you have internet access and you need to "top-up" with petrol (gas) as intervals, but it works OK.

www.cncsimulator.com

I also use MACH3 to verify toolpaths.

ATB
Andre