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Messages - Administrator

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16
Trouble Shooting / Re: Stepper motor not catching the rubber tread
« on: July 13, 2017, 05:05:34 PM »
Yes, shipping outside of the US is very expensive.

I'm out of inventory and my 3D printer is now a Z axis laser machine!

17
BenCutLaser / Re: Dwf autocad before 2000 error message (OPEN)
« on: July 13, 2017, 04:02:00 PM »
I don't think Rel 14 is new enough. You can try it but I don't think it will be post year 2000 format.

You should open it and save it in another program such as QCAD or LibreCAD or NanoCAD.

18
BenCutLaser / Re: Dwf autocad before 2000 error message
« on: July 13, 2017, 03:19:44 PM »
Do you mean DXF files?

Open in QCAD and do a save as and select the latest version (release 27).

Then BCL will be able to open the file and use it.

19
General Discussion / Re: If you thought we had it bad
« on: July 13, 2017, 02:06:05 PM »
Ray said his Cohesion3D board is like the Smoothie board. Since BCL already works with the Smoothie, I'm not expecting any surprises to get BCL working with the Cohesion3D board.

20
BenCutLaser / Re: Runtime Error
« on: July 12, 2017, 04:15:39 PM »
Please provide me with the following information: http://benboxlaser.us/index.php/topic,1128.0.html

Important to include the steps for me to try and reproduce. Telling me you get a runtime error without telling where in your use of BCL, doesn't tell me enough to help you. I don't have enough information to try and reproduce the error.

21
General Discussion / Re: If you thought we had it bad
« on: July 12, 2017, 08:13:08 AM »
I just got a tracking number for the Cohesion3D board from Ray! What excellent support!

22
T2 Engraving / Re: dxf and questions
« on: July 12, 2017, 08:09:22 AM »
Detail lines...yes I understand now...thanks.

You should be able to assign a 'detail' line color in T2 to surface burn those lines and then assign a 'cut' color for the lines you want to cut all the way through. Should be pretty easy to do in T2.

23
T2 Engraving / Re: dxf and questions
« on: July 12, 2017, 07:57:57 AM »
As shown in the attachment, Release 13 is still a very old format. You should save it to Release 27.

Still waiting for your answer on what are detail lines?

24
BenCutLaser / Re: BCL 1.8.6a Release (INFO)
« on: July 12, 2017, 07:54:19 AM »
New feature in 1.8.6e

Auto-direction menu selection. Allows you to assign a laser tool to the same drawing object (arcs or e-arcs or splines or polylines)...re-order them in the sequence you want them burned...and then via a pop up menu, set all of their directional flows to be the same. Can save a large amount of time having to do this manually.

See the three attachments.

Here are the steps to do this using mdoolin's logo as an example:

1. Group together all the Arcs for each part of your logo. Attachment shows I grouped all the Arcs for the vertical part of the D.

2. Assign your laser tool to each one of these Arcs.

3. The top one assigned with a laser tool determines the flow. It doesn't really matter which way the direction flows, as long as all the Arcs are in the same flow. Note: not necessarily the same direction. Think of an S shape. The flow will be correct but not all Arcs will have the same CW/CCW direction.

4. Right mouse click and select the Arc menu item as shown in the attachment.

Notes:

We don't normally think about it when making our DXF drawings, but if you're using BCL, you can add extra Line drawing objects to your file even tho you don't need them or intend to use them. Why? Because these unused Lines will give you extra line separation in your listbox on the right side of the main canvas. If you're going to be sliding objects up and down and grouping them, these unused Line objects will help to give you visual separation as you don't have to assign a laser tool to them, so they will appear as 'blank' lines in your tool path list.

If you wish, you can save each task, as my example above, to its own tool path file. That way, you can manage and work with each section of your logo. You might end up with 6 or 8 tool path files, but they will be easier to manager than trying to tool path the whole logo, because you have a lot of Arc moving to do in this case. You can load each tool path file and burn it. This is way I would do it with this logo, but it can be done in one whole job if you insist!!

Attachment 11 shows all the Arcs for the vertical part of the D grouped together and in the correct sequence.

Attachment 22 shows me just about ready to do the menu click. Note the upper three Arc objects have the wrong direction. The Top Arc sets the flow which is the long vertical fat one.

Attachment 33 shows the task done. All Arcs are now (in this case) flowing CCW).

25
T2 Engraving / Re: dxf and questions
« on: July 12, 2017, 07:45:44 AM »
The first attachment shows the same problem well over half of the drawings found on the internet have: no units of measurement set. If I had a Dollar for every BCL support email asking what's wrong with my DXF file and finding no units of measurement set, I could be retired on the beach sipping fruity drinks  :) So set the units to all Metric and save the file into a newer format.

The file has the older DXF format: older than year 2000 so BCL won't use it. The easy fix is to do a save as and save it with a newer format. I use QCAD for that but almost any CAD program will work.

The second attachment shows most of the drawing in negative space. The second most common problem found with DXF files on the internet. Drag a rectangle around the whole drawing and move all of it into positive space. In this second attachment, you can see my tan colored 'wood' which marks where positive space is. Use QCAD to do this move as it's pretty easy and quick to do.

Attachment three shows that I have assigned a laser tool to one of the wings. All of the drawing objects are Polylines and this is wonderful news. It will make working with this DXF file very easy in BCL.

Question: what are detail lines? I don't fully understand your question.

26
Trouble Shooting / Re: Stepper Resolution
« on: July 11, 2017, 04:12:07 PM »
Mike, I emailed you a link to get this new release if you want to test it out.

27
BenCutLaser / Re: Size of cutted objects smaller then drawing (OPEN)
« on: July 11, 2017, 01:18:04 PM »
I don't see anything in your Grbl settings that stand out to me as a red flag.

When you open the dxf file in BCL, does in load in at 100mm square? See attachment.


28
General Discussion / Re: If you thought we had it bad
« on: July 11, 2017, 11:24:43 AM »
UPDATE: I received a reply from Ray from Cohesion3D. He is very interested in supporting our development efforts for T2Laser and BCL. He will be mailing me out a board for testing. When I'm finished, I will mail it to @Zax for his T2 testing.

Very nice to get such positive support from a company...thanks very much Ray...!!!

http://cohesion3d.com

29
Trouble Shooting / Re: Stepper Resolution
« on: July 11, 2017, 11:07:04 AM »
The auto-direction menu selection is finished Mike.

See attachments.

Here are the steps to do this (in your case):

1. Group together all the Arcs for each part of your logo. Attachment shows I grouped all the Arcs for the vertical part of the D.

2. Assign your laser tool to each one of these Arcs.

3. The top one assigned with a laser tool determines the flow. It doesn't really matter which way the direction flows, as long as all the Arcs are in the same flow. Note: not necessarily the same direction. Think of an S shape. The flow will be correct but not all Arcs will have the same CW/CCW direction.

4. Right mouse click and select the Arc menu item as shown in the attachment.

Notes:

We don't normally think about it when making our DXF drawings, but if you're using BCL, you can add extra Line drawing objects to your file even tho you don't need them or intend to use them. Why? Because these unused Lines will give you extra line separation in your listbox on the right side of the main canvas. If you're going to be sliding objects up and down and grouping them, these unused Line objects will help to give you visual separation as you don't have to assign a laser tool to them, so they will appear as 'blank' lines in your tool path list.

If you wish, you can save each task, as my example above, to its own tool path file. That way, you can manage and work with each section of your logo. You might end up with 6 or 8 tool path files, but they will be easier to manager than trying to tool path the whole logo, because you have a lot of Arc moving to do in this case. You can load each tool path file and burn it. This is way I would do it with this logo, but it can be done in one whole job if you insist!!

Attachment 11 shows all the Arcs for the vertical part of the D grouped together and in the correct sequence.

Attachment 22 shows me just about ready to do the menu click. Note the upper three Arc objects have the wrong direction. The Top Arc sets the flow which is the long vertical fat one.

Attachment 33 shows the task done. All Arcs are now (in this case) flowing CCW).

30
Trouble Shooting / Re: I cant open this dxf
« on: July 11, 2017, 09:58:56 AM »
QCAD will open it but:

1. It's ALL in negative space which is bad.

2. It's units of measurement are all different (there are three that should be the same).

NanoCAD will open it.

LibreCAD will open it.

BCL shows 403 and 940 internal structural errors and therefore won't load it as is.

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