Mach3 Software CNC cutting order

[Davedbq]

Hello Everyone,
I have just completed my build of a Solsylva 25 x 25 CNC machine designed by David Steele. Great fun to build and a great design. I started doing testing on the machine yesterday and all looks good toward actually chipping wood and making parts. The question I have for the group is when I use Mach3 to run the machine the order in which the part or engraving is run seems odd. It does not follow a logical path around an image but rather randomly picks points here and there and then kind of fills in the blanks as it goes along. Is there something I can do to eliminate this from happening? Or is this just the way it is? My machine seems to be cutting fine but the order it does it in seems not to make sense. It seems to me that the cutting process would be a lot faster if it would just follow say the outer perimeter of the design and then the next longest line or curve and continue on until the design is complete. Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

[ger21]

What are you creating the g-code with?

[Davedbq]

The G-code was created using LazyCam. I am sure there is something better. Just have not gotten that far yet with my experimenting.

[ger21]

LazyCAM is dictating the cutting order. I don't use it, so can't really help, but a good look through the manual may give you some tips.
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[Davedbq]

I did some searching online and found an easy fix to the cutting order used by LazyCam and Mach 3. What it turns out is that the WMF file that I was creating is somehow different when created using Corel software. The cutting order does not follow a logical progression. I found an easy file converter called Image2Cad. It's a free download that works perfectly. I have been converting the files now and they work great with LazyCam and Mach 3 software. A beautiful thing to see when the parts and engravings are being made. It follows a very logical progression while cutting is going on. To give you an example I had an image of Homer Simpson being engraved that was 10" tall. I originally tried to run it at 25" a minute (cutting on foam) and it would take 20 minutes to cut. I re-ran the same image using Image2Cad and now I can cut it at 15" a minute and it only takes 7 minutes to complete. Saves a lot of wasted steps for sure and is easier on my CNC machine.