VCarvePro on Gravograph IS400

[dgreensill]

Hi folks,

Is anyone here running a Gravograph IS400 on VCarvePro?

I'm about to buy one, but the software package that comes with it is Gravostyle 5 Discovery, and the upgrade to Classic will cost me $4200. If VCarvePro can do the same sort of work, it'd obviously be much preferable.

Thanks!

[blackbeard52]

You should probably also ask this question on the Vectric Forum here on the Zone or at vectric.com they are fantastic with support.....

Bob

[dgreensill]

Thanks, I've asked on the Vectric forums.

[aminear]

You will probably want to download the trial software and check it out.
Even if someone tells you it will run it.

I just purchased it last weekend and it does have a post processor for Gravograph IS400.

If you get ready to buy it I know how you can get 10% off the list price on Vectric's web page.

Arnie

[dgreensill]

I thought I should revisit this, since I've had Aspire (the most recent upgrade to VCarvePro) running on my Gravograph IS400 for a couple weeks now. The short summary is, I'm very happy with it. I like it a lot better than Gravostyle to use, it seems a lot more powerful and flexible, its image handling is far better, its font handling is far better, it's much cheaper, and it doesn't force me to take up a USB slot with an annoying dongle.

Things I haven't (so far) gotten Aspire to do:
(1) Control the spindle speed, especially during the job (the machine can have the spindle turned off manually, but this must be done each toolpath and if you forget to do this once, you can ruin the job);
(2) Control the X and Y motion speed, especially during the job;
(3) Control Z axis motion other than to set (a) a safe height and (b) an engraving depth, and raise and lower between (a) and (b);
(4) Properly handle the centering vice, although I think I've figured out how to sort that one out (set up a standard file with the centre point marked, and centre the work around that point);
(5) Output to the machine with any function other than Quick Engrave;
(6) Calculate and retain multiple different outline/hatch fill toolpaths in different directions. Doing this gives a really nice result, particularly on maps and so forth - I've seen commemorative plates with a very nice map of Australia on brass plate, with each state hatch-filled in a different direction, and a superimposed state emblem drawn by not engraving its outlines, on each of the states.

Due to problem #5 above the only tools I've tried out have been a diamond drag head, for aluminium and brass, and a V-bit, for plastic and MDF. (Oh, and a biro core, which drew an interesting picture.) These have given very nice results. Being able to hatch and outline fill any font or picture area, and being able to quickly and easily convert a bitmap to a toolpath at high rez, has greatly increased the visual quality of the work I can do.

Solving problem #3 (and ideally problem #5 too) would make it fully capable of 2.5D carving, which by rights it ought (as it has X, Y, Z and rotary spindle motors) be able to do.

However absent this I figure it ought to be possible to (slowly) do 2.5D carving by splitting a job into depth layers, working out toolpaths for each depth, and engraving each toolpath in descending order down the workpiece. In other words, 2.5D carving where one carves the full X and Y data at each Z increment, before going on to the next Z increment. Anyone know an easy way to do that?

Tips, in case anyone else does this:
- Output can take a very long time. Aspire doesn't seem to write efficient HPGL, and if you tell it to do several copies of the same infilled picture, it will output every separate motion in the infill for each picture. I carved a simple MDF jig this afternoon for engraving 70 x 25mm circles at once, just a 0.5mm outline-filled circular carving in each of the 70 positions, and it must have taken an hour or more to send the data to the machine. Since the job must then be manually started, this can cause a significant delay and should be taken into account. I've left it overnight and hopefully it will all be good in the morning.
- On that point, Aspire has a very good mail-merge label generator. Set up your jig right, and your data files, and you should be able to easily do many engravings at once. I have an order for identical (except for nameplate) trophies for 250 kids coming up that I'm looking forward to running off quickly. Each one needs a 50mm circle with the football club's logo engraved, and a rectangular nameplate with something like "Junior Rugby Club/{name}/U{age} 2009".
- This also works for plastic and metal sheets, of course. I've done another job for a local bowls club who wanted to have 100x18mm plastic nameplates made up, which they would stick fridge-type magnets to the back of and use with a whiteboard to organize their match pairings and record results. In that case I'd have preferred to use my CNC router but it wasn't working; many thanks to Bill (wjfiles) for lending me the use of his.
- Extremely complex engravings can be broken up into pieces to run. I did a test run with a pen-and-ink drawing of some flowers, engraving it into brass as a gift for my granny. The simplest way to do that is to select an area of vectors, calculate and output the toolpath, remember to turn off the spindle if it's not required, delete the engraved vectors, select another lot of vectors, etc. As long as the job never moves between runs, and you don't save the partially deleted file over the whole one, it works perfectly well.

Replace the control box?
It's occurred to me after consultation with people at the recent Melbourne CNC BBQ that the reason problems #1, #2 and #3 above exist are not due to the machine as such, but rather the control box, which is designed to intelligently interpret HPGL and run the motors accordingly. Replacing the control box with an array of Geckos or similar might let me run G-Code on it, ie treat it as a small CNC machine and pass it commands through Mach3. There is some inherent danger in this of course, if the machine gets instructions that it will damage itself to fulfil, but that's not unique to the IS400.