Re: digitizer probe and software

Hi Gordon,

Glad you're enjoying the MaxNC probe! I've also been able to run the
NCTODXF.EXE (NC to DXF) file conversion program on surfaces i've
digitized; however I think the DXF file is still only "LINES", and not
"SURFACES". So, they aren't convertible to STL's, at least with
StlTrans. Can Rhino convert them to STL's?

I'm going to generate ROW & COLUMN output (XYZ for StlTrans), which
should solve the problem. OR, I could also generate DEM's.

Yes, you can have Vector put up a dialog box and ask you for the feed
rate, I think the supplied MaxNC post does that. OR, there is an option
on the NC editor to get things like that. Easy enough to add my
comments and an extra line or two to the code, as you've observed.

You can also import the digitizer Gcode file into Vector CAD/CAM
directly, and save the drawing file as a DXF. You already HAVE the
GCODE, or you can re-generate it from the DXF file. In-between, it is
then possible to do some "clean ups" to the data.

Alan KM6VV


Smoke wrote:

>
> Speaking of software...
>
> I just got done testing the probe software that came with the unit.
>
> It works GREAT! Took about 30 minutes to digitize an area 3.25" square x .5
> inches high.
>
> Then I ran the conversion program. That worked well too...but it wasn't to
> apparent. After looking under the file name it saved the file in I found
> the file was 1.2+ MB in size. Apparently the conversion program will always
> send the converted .dxf file to the same place, so you have to be sure to
> rename it after converting.
>
> I then opened the file in Rhino just to see what it looked like. That step
> worked well too, so I could have easily enlarged or shrunk the image.
>
> Next thing I tried was opening it with the Vector Demo pgm to see if it
> would generate a gcode for machining. That turned out to be real simple.
> Had the gcode in less than two minutes! One thing I have noticed is that
> the gcode doesn't put in and feed rates or spindle speeds. Maybe the
> program is capable of that as well. If so, I haven't found out how to do
> that yet. In the meantime, it's pretty easy to add a few lines of code.
>
> Smoke