Kcam 4

[mwestern]

Has anyone had any experience using Kcam 4.

M

[rcrabb]

I played around with it for about a week. It ran my motors ok. But I didn't like the fact it had no windows XP support.

[mwestern]

Thanks for the input.

m

[thuffner3]

I'm using Kcam 4.?.

I thought it good enough to pay the registration fee $95.00US.

What would you like to know?

[CNCadmin]

Unless they have a board to buffer it's gonna run verry sloow.

[thuffner3]

Originally posted by CNCadmin Unless they have a board to buffer it's gonna run verry sloow.

A board to buffer. I'm using Stepper 3 LLL 3 axis controller for mine. Is there something I can learn to make mine a little faster.
Right now I'm achieving about 7IPM. With considerable stutter over that. My motors are 6vdc/1.2amp, powered by a standard 12v psu, -w- power resistors on the positive lines???

[anoel]

I tried KCAM and was pretty disappointed. I tried with 6v 1.2A motors at 12V as well and 6ipm was about as good as it got and that was not even particularly reliable.

I moved up to a 24v supply and Turbo CNC in DOS and can step nicely over 33 ipm.

[balsaman]

The problem with kcam is windows. It interferes with the programs ability to deliver a smooth pulse train to the controller. If you use Kcam, try Turbocnc in dos mode (not a dos "window" and you will see a 50% improvement in speed and smoother too.

Eric

[thuffner3]

Originally posted by anoel I tried KCAM and was pretty disappointed. I tried with 6v 1.2A motors at 12V as well and 6ipm was about as good as it got and that was not even particularly reliable. I moved up to a 24v supply and Turbo CNC in DOS and can step nicely over 33 ipm.

Do you think the same would hold true? If I continued to run my 12v psu -w- 6v/1.2amp motors.

[anoel]

Give TurboCNC a try you'll be impressed with how much smoother the steppers run. Even at 12V it'll be better. Your rapids won't be much better. (They will be better by an inch or two per minute, maybe more.) Even with 24v and KCam you'll not be able to touch what it'll do with TurboCNC. When I tried KCAM the motors sounded awful and had very non smooth motion and seemed to loose steps very easy even when operating at slow speeds.

If I get a few minutes I'll fire up the Kcam demo again and do a direct comparison between it and TurboCNC. Haven't done that in a while.

[thuffner3]

I'm waiting to see what I can find out about my current controller/motor configuration.
Also Turbo CNC does not have the User GUI I got with Kcam, so that's going to take me a minute to get use to.

Thanks a bunch guys.
Peace
Neil





Commandment #1
THOU SHAULT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.

Does this mention a specific GOD or is it the guilt of all the people who want the commandments banded that see something wrong with the world's first set of truley basic LAWS.

[mwestern]

How does Mach1 get around this problem?

I know that windows has a multimedia timer function in the win API, so why would KCAM not tack advantage of this, if this works for audio play back it should be able to run a stepper. Timing for audio playback would be much more demanding I would imagine.

Mark