4th Axis machining

[MichaelHenry]

justgary,

Dave is a distributor in the UK and so far as I know gets no compensation from sales in the US or any country other than the UK. As a reseller, he probably also sells SprutCAM for a lot more than Tormach does and he probably provides the level of support to his UK clients that you would like to have. The few places that advertise SprutCAM on the web list it at $3.2k or more and I'm not sure if that is for one of the more basic versions or not.

As I see it Dave is not required to provide support for SprutCAM copies that are bought through Tormach and Tormach charges so low a price that it is not reasonble to expect them to provide technical support. That leaves the users up to their own devices. I elected to spend $200/year to gain access to Daves' tutorials and found that well worth the money compared to spending $4k or more for a CAM program with similar capabilities and better tech support.

That said, wish I could help with the 4th axis question but I'm not up to speed on it yet myself.


Mike

[R.DesJardin]

I did a month's worth and found them very helpful, they got me thru the issues I was having. Still pondering a full years worth, if business picks up I'm sure I will.

[justgary]

All -

I can certainly see all of the points of view going on here, except maybe the comment about Tormach selling at so low a price. The version they sell is certainly not a giveaway, and it is crippled only to their machine through a special postprocessor (and semi-locked configuration). Yes, it is cheaper than retail, but also not as universal as retail. Also, it uses a damned dongle to run. That automatically makes any software worth half price in my book because of the inconvenience. I write software for a living, so I am sensitive to piracy, but dongles have always made me mad.

Tormach has probably sold plenty of copies of the software here in the US. I'm only speculating, and they of course would know for sure, but I'll suppose that they have sold over 500 copies (given the "five thumbs" rating on their website), which is a half million hypothetical dollars in revenue to split between Tormach and Sprut. At what point is Tormach's revenue enough to justify someone who knows about the product they sell? Would hiring such a person increase their revenue? I'm betting so.

Here's what I'll do. Since several of us are apparently lurking around waiting to grab this morsel, I'll whip up an example SprutCAM file and point out the specific things I did to get the result I did. I'll post it over on the SprutCAM forum (on this site) and we can all take a crack at figuring out the last few tidbits that I can't yet grasp. If you can watch the videos and offer tips, great. If not, just keep trying with me. At least the secret will eventually be out, and we'll all be better for trying.

Regards,

- Just Gary

P.S. I get the idea from reading a bunch of websites that the newest version of SprutCAM may make this easier to do. Has anyone tried it?

[justgary]

I finally got an acceptable toolpath, so I just added the "Just Gary 33-step method to 4th Axis beauty" over in the SprutCAM forum (on this site) if you are interested in trying it.

I couldn't get the zip file to upload, so maybe we can find an alternate method to get it to you.

Regards,

- Just Gary

[MichaelHenry]

I can certainly see all of the points of view going on here, except maybe the comment about Tormach selling at so low a price. The version they sell is certainly not a giveaway, and it is crippled only to their machine through a special postprocessor (and semi-locked configuration).

Gary,

Glad to hear that you figured out most of the 4th axis issue and that you are sharing it on the CNCZone SC forum.

A few corrections to the rest of your post, though. Tormach's version of SC is the Master version, which is the most feature-capable version and includes lathe as well as milling support. It can be had with a dongle or software protection if the dongle bothers you. You probably object to any form of copy protection, though, and I share that objection to some extent. There don't seem to be many alternatives in the >$500 CAM market though. Perhaps more important is that you can get SC from Tormach in an "all machines" version which lets you run it with any post that SC supplies or that the user cares to create. The adder for that version is pretty minor.

Mike

[justgary]

Mike -

Thanks for the info. I didn't know that Tormach sold the "all machines" version of SprutCAM.

The fact that I can't just get update the postprocessor file without Tormach's help does bug me.

- Just Gary

[David Bord]

Originally Posted by justgary Mike - Thanks for the info. I didn't know that Tormach sold the "all machines" version of SprutCAM. The fact that I can't just get update the postprocessor file without Tormach's help does bug me. - Just Gary

Hey Gary,

You should be able to just download the latest post right off of their site without contacting them. Its located in the documents section. If you have a problem finding it, I can email it to you.

David