SheetCam - Affordable yet powerful 2 1/2D CAM

[gerald_d]

I first heard of SheetCam (http://www.sheetcam.com/) on another Forum, and got interested in its tabbing ability. Invited the developer, Les Newell, over to the "Euro" camp ShopBot and saw some of the power packed into this little package.

Sheetcam is for guys who already have dxf's - it does not try to be a design program.

But it does the basics very well:
- Inside, outside or no tool compensation
- Multi pass cutting
- Finishing allowance for roughing tools
- Selectable leadin and leadout types/size
- Ramped plunges
- Climb or normal cut direction
- 3D Preview
- ShopBot post-processor
And placing tabs by simple cursor-pointing!

All for $150

Plus, Les Newell is ever eager to help out. For an obscure reason we wanted to place tabs and export them as a dxf, and he wrote a post-processor especially for us.

[Brady Watson]

Gerald et al,
Les is one of the good guys...very knowledgable and eager to help. He was instrumental in helping me with my Bridgeport CNC project. It's nice to know that he created a post for us SB guys. I have heard good things about Sheetcam over the past year or so from other CNCers.

-B

[3imoh]

Thanks Gerald-
This looks like a great program. I have downloaded the eval version and am getting a feel for it. Personally, I find the UI superior to Parts Wizard. The tabbing function and ramped lead-ins look really usefull.

Note to all...if you want to try the SB post you need to get the development version...

-Howie

[mikejohn]

Gerald
Are you using Sheetcam as your .dxf to .sbp method, rather than the program you were previously using?
.....................Mike

[gerald_d]

Hi Mike
Vector is still our primary .dxf to .sbp converter because it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. (That's one of the reasons why we wanted a .dxf output from Sheetcam). We have just developed a new boat kit (http://www.scapenotes.com/mdc/messages/5/5.html) that requires 33 sheets of ply and around 500 tabs. With SheetCam, the tab placement was resolved in a tenth of the time it would normally have taken us.

However, when we get the spindle running, we will want gentle ramped plunges and have seen that SheetCam does that very neatly.

The whole "feel" of SheetCam just makes it clear that Les has actually driven CNC machines personally. There are no bells and whistles, few icons. The docs and tutorials are clear and simple. SheetCam has no prentences - WYSIWYG.

In our situation, when we started out with ShopBot, with us having a good CAD grounding, we would have picked SheetCam (for 2D, plus MeshCam for 3D) over Vector if they had been available at that time.

[Les Newell (Unregistered Guest)]

Thank you Gerald and Brady for the praise :-)
If anyone wants to try SheetCam, go to http://www.sheetcam.com and download the development version (currently V2.1.21) from the downloads area. The 'stable' version, V2.0.3 will not work correctly with Shopbot machines. If you like what you see, drop me an email and I will send you a free 30 day evaluation licence which removes the code size limit.

Currently the post does not turn the spindle on and off. The documentation isn't very clear on what codes do this. Can anyone help me?

[gerald_d]

Aha Les, looks like I was jumping the gun a bit


Our SB is antiquated in today's language (we still use a wall-mounted switch) and I don't know if the modern folk (like Brady) actually have standard commands inside their .sbp files for controlling their spindles. I know that some guys use WordPad and the like to tack bits of home-made text onto their .sbp files for things like routers, vacuum, dust extraction, and somehow I thought this "wordpad-tacking" was still SB state of the art?? Anyone??

(Les, the .sbp files I saw from Sheetcam looked fine to me - you may already be thinking of going further than what we are used to?)

[paco]

Hi Les!

If you'd like it, I would be happy to send you a bunch of modified posts from CAD/CAM that I use which have this kind of control and some more... along with some basic infos about it... let me know...

[richards]

The command to turn the router/spindle on is SO,1,1 and the command to turn the router/spindle off is SO,1,0.

SO stands for set output, 1 is the output being used and 1 or 0 is the value, where 1=ON and 0=OFF.

NOTE: SO,1,0 turns the router/spindle off without user intervention, but SO,1,1 pops up a screen telling the operator to push the start button on the Alpha's control box, meaning that the operator has to push the start button and then click the OK button (or press enter) when the router/spindle is at speed.

[les_newell]

Thanks Paco but Mike gave me the information I needed. I have attached an updated post that will turn the spindle on/off. To install it, save the file to any convenient folder. Run SheetCam and go to options->Select post processor. Navigate to this post and open it. Answer yes when you are asked if you want to overwrite the existing post.


4273 (2.8 k)

[les_newell]

Er, that didn't come out as expected :-( The forum seems to have munged the filename. Here is a zip file instead. Unzip the contends and to any convenient folder and follow the instructions above.




4274 (0.9 k)

[les_newell]

Umm, OK it looks like the forum doesn't like file attachments. How about if I host it on my site. That should work. http://www.sheetcam.com/downloads/Shopbot.post Right click and save as.

[3imoh]

Howdy All-

If anyone is interested, I created a 2nd Z shopbot post for sheetcam by modifying the one Les posted here. It mimics the PW method of adding offset x and y variables.

You can find it at:
http://crazycat.org/tmp/Shopbot_2nd_Head.post

thanks,
Howie

[les_newell]

The way I normally run a second head is to say that tools over 100 belong to the second head. The post can then be set up to check if the tool number is over 100 and apply a suitable offset. It does however mean that you have to modify a number in the post if the distance between the two heads changes.