Welcome new developers!

Submitted by lars on Wed, 01/25/2012 - 13:48
Development team symbol

Some days ago two more pairs of helping hands joined PyCAM’s development: Paul Bonser and John Wiggins from the ATX Hackerspace (hopefully I did not forget someone).

Quickly a lot of progress happened:

  • version control was switched from Subversion to Git
  • the development tree layout was structured in a more common way
  • a simple benchmark script was added for performance measurements
  • one performance bottleneck was removed (reduced benchmark time by 17%)

(see full changelog)

Maybe most importantly the development mailinglist finally came to life. Almost 40 messages were exchanged within the last four days. Prior to that it was less than one mail per month.

Let’s hope for even more inspiring progress in the next weeks! Especially performance improvements seem to be on the top of the current list of things to be done …

Comments

Submitted by Gast on Mon, 03/26/2012 - 23:11.

Help with Windows versions - cannot open SVG files

Hello, I am trying to get a PyCam developer to address my problems opening AVG files in Windows. Neither the stand-alone nor the full install versions are capable of opening SVG files after a new install, including all listed dependencies.

I have posted detailed logs of my attempts at the SourceForge forum here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pycam/forums/forum/860184/topic/5132525

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Submitted by Gast on Sun, 03/25/2012 - 23:53.

hot wire cutting

Hi,

I am really happy to see that the this project is still alive!
Is there a simple way to generate 2D engraving G-Code along a continuous path, without “empty” moves at safety height in between?

I am currently working on a simple G-Code post processor for cutting model airplanes from foam by cnc hot wire machines. The needed 4-axis g-Code will be merged from 2 pycam generated files.

Example machine: http://cnc-hotwire.de/

Cheers,
Tobias

Submitted by lars on Sun, 04/01/2012 - 03:46.

hot wire cutting

Hi Tobias,

I guess hot-wire cutting should be the same as laser cutting (no vertical moves, just toggling the cutter/laser). Currently we are doing this with PyCAM and some script magic based on “sed” applied to the GCode file.
The next release of PyCAM will contain a postprocessor for laser cutters. This should fullfil your specific needs, as well …

cheers,
Lars

Submitted by Gast on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 11:48.

Waterline..

Unfortunately Waterline is unstable i opencamlib also. The low-level push-cutter functions are probably OK, but the area-model or “weave” at the next level up is problematic.
Anders

Submitted by Gast on Thu, 01/26/2012 - 12:06.

opencamlib?

Hi,
I’ve put up an experimeental PPA for opencamlib and my other cam-experiments:
https://launchpad.net/~anders-e-e-wallin/+archive/cam

The drop-cutter cutter location is pretty robust, and is probably faster than with pycam.

Anders

Submitted by lars on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 01:35.

opencamlib!

Hi Anders,

opencamlib would surely offer great improvements for several operations of PyCAM. I am specifically looking forward to waterlines and polygon offsetting – both are not very stable in PyCAM.

Recently I prepared a short description of the required tasks (from PyCAM’s point of view). Right now I (personally) will focus on the new release – but afterwards opencamlib will be high on my list …

cheers,
Lars

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