Artcam Pro Stepped Inlay Problems

[mbarinholtz@chdc.org]

At the last Camp ShopBot, Bill Palumbo was kind enough to give potential ArtCam 5.5 customers and newbies a tour around some of the great features that the application presents. One machining feature, the Inlay Wizard, shows incredible potential, but doesn't seem to work.

I've had no luck with pocket, stepped pocket, or stepped hole female and stepped male inlay processing. For example:

If I want to create a stepped hole inlay of a 6" diam. circle in 1/2" material, I...
- select the vector
- specify a .5" finish depth
- the shoulder dimesnions are .25" deep and .25" wide
- the finishing tool is selected (in this case, a 1/8" end mill
- not using a roughing pass, don't need to with a hole...
- the material is set up corrctly

when I go to create a toolpath I recieve several errors, which include:

"The selected tool is too large to machine either the male insert or the female pocket"

"Failed to create inner shoulder - is shoulder too wide?"

What obvious step am I missing? This happened initially with lettering, and I thought that the application was supposed to compensate for sharp inside corners by taking into account the cutter diam. - then I tried a simple circle - no inside corners - and nothing. Is this a bug? Is there a patch? Anyone having a similar issue?

I understand that 6.o is coming out in a few days, but I'd love some feedback without having to wait to install a new release.

[mbarinholtz@chdc.org]

BTW - I noticed that Delcam added a user group forum, but it's still really green - hoping that their developers check the forum occasionally....

You can view it free, sign up to post and reply - it's at:

http://forum.artcam.com

[billp]

Matt, here's one workaround for the example you list above;
First offset a "shoulder circle" .25" inside your original circle. Then use the profile tool to cut inside that new line .5" deep and take out your center piece.
Then go back and do TWO more profile toolpaths. One inside your original circle, and one outside your new circle. This saves having to change to a .25"bit so all the cuts can be done with the .125"bit......

[billp]

Matt, In re-reading my above post I should have mentioned that in Artcam you can combine ALL of the above profile toolpaths into one when you save them,( because you would be using the same size bit for all three passes...). This way you won't have to re-run 3 separate toolpaths...

[mbarinholtz@chdc.org]

Bill -

Thanks for looking out for us - I have read your posts on the Artcam forum as well, and I believe that we are getting some feedback from the Artcam folks - I have applied the v 5.510 patch, and still problems. I am specifically trying to do inlaid lettering and complex shapes - the wizard they offer takes a lot of the figuring out of how to handle inside corners that will be rounded over, and have to compensate on the male insert. For the more consistent shapes that I can apply fillets to the corners with some accuracy "by hand", but I don't trust my math on some of the strange inside sharp corners I've been drawing.

I am also wondering - based on ArtCam Bryan's last posting, it sounds like they are hoping to deliver an upgrade by the end of the week - should I read something into that? Will this be arriving later than we thought? And what did you say about people who purchased within the last year are eligible for a free upgrade?

Stay Warm!

Matt Barinholtz

[billp]

Matt, The beta for version 6 is in the testing stage now, but only for Windows XP. they will be releasing the '98 version "soon". As far as the upgrades I don't know exactly what the cutoff point is, so you should contact Shopbot directly for the full details there. It does seem strange that some people CAN use the inlay Wizard while others cannot. Brad is looking into it for us, and hopefully will be able to get feedback from the developers soon.
Maybe you can forward some of your problem files to me, and I'll see if I can find ways to get them done with less headaches.....Bill P.