Minor bug found in 0.8.5
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2014 8:20 am
I was one of the few having trouble with arcs causing infinite loops in the early 0.8.x versions. Lately, I've been converting my g-code to lines in Cambam, which has been a rather poor solution because the arcs get bastardized into a string of jagged little lines. Unsightly, and really pushing my 10 mil trace/10 mil clearance design rules. But no more of that, it seems. So far 0.8.5 has fixed these problems for me, so thanks so much for the good work.
You might remember I do most of my drawings in illustrator and export them as a .dxf file. This works ok, but the dimensions in the .dxf file never precisely match the dimensions in the original .ai file. For example, an object I place at (0,0) in illustrator may be at (.0001, 0) when I load the .dxf file in Cambam. No big deal as far as I'm concerned, but this led me to find a bug. Using a .125" endmill, I was profiling a rectangle, the left side of which was designed to be at X = .0625". This means of course that the spindle should be at X = 0. In Cambam, however, the left side of the rectangle was at .0624" or some such number, which forced the spindle to be at X = -.0001. So when I made the g-code file, fed it into AL, and loaded the output into Mach3, it gave me an error message. "Radius to end of arc different from radius to start", I think. But when I moved the rectangle in Cambam to X = .0625", and did the same, all was well. Strange. Looking at the AL file, you can see where some wanky numbers start to show up in your interpolation routines just as the spindle moves past X = 0. I did try moving the left side of the rectangle to X = 0, just to see whether it was the negative position that was causing the problem, but it was not.
Anyway, have a look if you want. Three files are attached. Obvious which is which.
You might remember I do most of my drawings in illustrator and export them as a .dxf file. This works ok, but the dimensions in the .dxf file never precisely match the dimensions in the original .ai file. For example, an object I place at (0,0) in illustrator may be at (.0001, 0) when I load the .dxf file in Cambam. No big deal as far as I'm concerned, but this led me to find a bug. Using a .125" endmill, I was profiling a rectangle, the left side of which was designed to be at X = .0625". This means of course that the spindle should be at X = 0. In Cambam, however, the left side of the rectangle was at .0624" or some such number, which forced the spindle to be at X = -.0001. So when I made the g-code file, fed it into AL, and loaded the output into Mach3, it gave me an error message. "Radius to end of arc different from radius to start", I think. But when I moved the rectangle in Cambam to X = .0625", and did the same, all was well. Strange. Looking at the AL file, you can see where some wanky numbers start to show up in your interpolation routines just as the spindle moves past X = 0. I did try moving the left side of the rectangle to X = 0, just to see whether it was the negative position that was causing the problem, but it was not.
Anyway, have a look if you want. Three files are attached. Obvious which is which.