Re:Visual Mill vs Visual Mill Basic questions

At 11:03 PM 4/21/2004 +0000, you wrote:

>and I've yet to find a good glossary of
>CNC terms on the Internet that answers my questions.

And

>I suspect that I'm not the only newbie who wonders what all this
>stuff is, and why it makes a difference, and would appreciate any
>light that the experienced members of the group might be willing to
>shed on the subject.

Did you ever strike a nerve here!. Finding a glossary is near to
impossible, especially one that bridges several applications. IE Rhino 3D
is a good, intuitive 3d Cad package, It has the worst documentation of any
software I've ever seen, for a major player, and no glossary at all. On
the other hand,I bought a CAD package on Ebay last year, DynaCadd 98. It
is not intuitive at all, but it has a glossary that I wouldn't part
with. I just hope that they, DynaCadd and Rhino were on the same wave
length, or at least on the same end of the joint they were smoking when
they came up with some of the terms they use. After 30 years of computer
work, both service and development, hardware and software, and having
finished and apprenticeship as a Machine Repair Machinist and working for
three years as a journeyman before going into computers, I am finding
terms used today don't bridge to any of my back ground.

In 1975, I was sent to Ecuador to train and assist the local computer
repair people, on some of the equipment I was proficient on. I didn't
speak Spanish. Not a word. My counter parts spoke little English. I had
a much easier time bridging that language gap than the one I'm now faced
with, with this whole CNC environment. At least there was a little common
ground in the language, and there were some interpreters to help. I sure
could use and interpreter now.

I've been working on my setup for almost a year now. The mechanical and
motion parts are easy. The CAD part is a difficult curve to climb if you
are a new comer, but the worst part for me has been bridging from a CAD
file to a Motion file. Every time I think I might have found an answer, a
problem shows up. I guess that with unlimited funds and life expectancy,
one could eventually find the answer of which packages were the best
combination at a given price point.

For what it's worth, I have settled on the following.

Lathe and Mill- Taigs
Stepper Motors - Pacific scientific
Drivers - Parker Compumotor OEM 650 / 750
Motion Controller - TurboCNC
Gcode simulator - CNCSimulator
Gcode Generator - Ace and/or DXF2G to handle
DXF CAD - Rhino3d

I've tried other combinations and most had strong points and weak
points. Right now, my Gcode Generator is my biggest problem. I am finding
that I need to cut and paste sections of Gcode generated by both to get the
final tool path I need.

You will notice that most of the software I'm using is shareware or
freeware. I have tried some of the $2K+ package demos and there was little
difference, at least to the rookie like me, to justify the price.

There are a couple good, at least with potential, packages that I've tried,
GenGcode and Meshcam are the top two that come to mind. GenGcode has
bogged down in it's development and that is a shame. Meshcam has taken the
raster approach to milling and while it does a good job of a lot of
applications, it isn't what I want for mine. The fine finish isn't there,
unless you are willing to make 200 hour mill runs. It is a lot like the
work that came off the mills when I was on my apprenticeship in the tool
and die room. They would require hundreds of hours to finish out to the
desired finish, by hand. While the work I'm trying to do is not of the
same scale, the proportional hours needed are about the same. I look at
the Gcode output, and if I'm not doing a rectangle piece, there needs to be
some G02 and G03 steps involved. You won't find them with some of the
raster approaches.

One more thing to look at is FreeMill. It's by the same folks as Visual
Mill but is "Free". It is another raster approach to cutting though. It
does have an interface to Rhino that works well. I would check out what it
will do for you, vs Visual Mill and Visual Mill Basic before plunking down
the big bucks.

Don