Developers blog

Developer’s blog of PyCAM – a 3-axis CNC toolpath generator.

Configurable path patterns

Submitted by lars on Thu, 08/11/2011 - 00:10
Spiral path pattern

The migration of PyCAM to a new modular GUI structure is almost completed. Thus I recently started to add some new fancy features to exploit all the new possibilities. One quite visible feature is the new configurable path generator. It now allows you to select a spiral toolpath instead of the currently available grid pattern.

Expect some even more interesting features for the next release …

UPDATE: rounded corners and spiral direction (inside / outside) are now configurable, as well. Read more »

Laser zum Frühstück

Submitted by lars on Mon, 08/08/2011 - 14:25
Laser-Frühstück

Dieses Frühstücksbrettchen wurde mit einem Laser inhaltlich und optisch aufgewertet. Der Produktionsablauf ist recht unspektakulär und umfasst folgende Schritte:

  1. passendes Zitat auswählen

  2. Zitat mit Inkscape als Vektorgrafik vorbereiten

  3. Vektorgrafik in PyCAM einfügen und einen einschichtigen Gravur-Pfad erstellen

  4. die erstellte GCode-Datei in EMC2 laden und ausführen

Read more »

Development bits: modularization and improved visualization

Submitted by lars on Mon, 07/18/2011 - 03:39
Improved OpenGL visualization

Some PyCAM users are accustomed to running the current state of development (svn trunk) if they want to use the latest features or simply out of curiosity watching the progress. This was working very well for the last 18 months. Thus maybe they were surprised to see trunk in an unusable state for the last three weeks. Of course there is a good reason for this: a huge internal rewrite of the GUI is currently going on. This post will explain the goals of this rewrite and the current state of development. Additionally I will describe some recent visualization improvements. Read more »

Trace & engrave (Video tutorial)

Submitted by lars on Sun, 07/03/2011 - 01:06
Logo for video tutorials

The following video tutorial was created by Chris Reilly (he is a developer of the great [Bad Link] project). Chris shows how to cut a photo with [Bad Link], trace it with [Bad Link] and generate the engraving toolpath with [Bad Link]. The video is a good introduction of the workflow from a pixel image to GCode. Have fun with it! Read more »

PyCAM v0.5.1 released

Submitted by lars on Mon, 06/13/2011 - 21:22
Logo for release announcements

The new release of PyCAM contains one important new feature (extrusion of 2D models) and many small fixes and improvements. Windows users will enjoy a more modern look of the GUI theme and Linux users will be happy about a packaging with better integration into the desktop. Additionally the 3D preview performance improved drastically. This article will give you an overview of all important changes. Read more »

Improved visuals for Windows standalone executable

Submitted by lars on Sun, 06/12/2011 - 01:06
Improved theme for Windows standalone executable (XP)

The Windows standalone executable is a nice a simple way for Windows users to try out and use PyCAM. It offers almost all of PyCAM’s features (except for multi-core CPUs and distributed processing). But its user interface always looked a bit outdated, due to the missing Windows-stylish GTK theme.

This is now fixed – even though [Bad Link] currently [Bad Link] out of the box. But a few lines of code did it. Read more »

Extrusion of 2D models

Submitted by lars on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 02:45
Spherical extrusion of a text

Extrusion is the operation of adding a third dimension to a flat 2D model. It is a visual attractive alternative for 2D engravings of text. Currently two kinds of spherical extrusions (radius up and radius down) and a chamfer extrusion are supported. The height and the border width of the extrusion are configurable. Read more »
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