Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

G-code ripper works in minutes. But digitizing a large piece needs some time.

For engraving I use a vacuum table to hold thin parts flat.

Parts with deviation in thickness should be face milled, thats faster than digitizing.

Longterm solution could be a laser rangefinder for on the fly Z adjustment like THC on plasma to save time processing parts.

Uwe

hivoltage wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 11:22 pm I was hopping that I could use the Digitizing software to accommodate my needs. However it will not. It was meant for creating geometry from existing parts.
I know how to edit Gcode. However I do not have a lot of time to look at the gcode tool to make it work with Centroid Acorn.
If I did go down that path it would take months and I wanted to do things sooner. :/

Posting G-code is not necessary as anyone who is interested in seeing the errors can get gcode from the software itself.

I am not compensating for the machine itself however when I V-carve I can get .5mm discrepancies in locations of material that isn't flat or has areas that are hard to notice by eye they are not flat.

I guess I will have to create the tool as no one else has this problem. Maybe not too many out there engraving or doing V-carving.

for engraving with varying height material we use floating 2nd Z head that is weighted/spring loaded and follows the material surface, this keeps cut depth same throughout engraving.

hivoltage wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 11:22 pm I am not compensating for the machine itself however when I V-carve I can get .5mm discrepancies in locations of material that isn't flat or has areas that are hard to notice by eye they are not flat.

I guess I will have to create the tool as no one else has this problem. Maybe not too many out there engraving or doing V-carving.

@ hivoltage perhaps you could elaborate on what you are attempting to v-carve. We do quite a bit of engraving and V-Carving on wood and have learned that good stock preparation is key. We have traditional woodworking tools to prep the stock as well as the CNC router. Even when the material is not truly flat due to planer snipe, slight bow, cup, etc, we can use work holding methods to compensate and the amount of variance in the V-Carve isn't noticeable to most people.

Some of the GRBL G-Code Senders such as Chilipeppr and bcnc? IIRC can take point maps of the surface and compensate for uneven surfaces on the material and use a mesh mapping of a definable number of X and Y points. This can be used for uneven PCB's, wood, or other material. Going to GRBL from Centroid would be a huge step backwards - like off of a cliff.

I'm not sure if Centroid's Ultimate software is capable of probing and creating a mesh of the surface with probe points that you could import into your CAD/CAM SW and overlay your v-carve onto the mesh plane. I haven't looked into the capabilities of it and plan to someday, but the thought of mapping hundreds or thousands of peices of stock vs. just prepping the material right doesn't sound appealing to my workflow, but that's my take on my process which may not work for your process.

CNC12 has no function to map a digitized surface in the g code, but it is easy to do it with g code ripper.

Uwe

Aspire can directly import centroid digitizing data (been years since i did it with Aspire so hope its still in there)

Ok I am going to try to explain better.
What I need is a way of probing the surface to record the deltas. The surface is too thin to shave it off using a surface bit.
This is for things like thin gauge metal engraving or PCB creation. I would use a drag bit for engraving but its not as good as using a engraving bit that isn't diamond point. I am eyeballing it for now and it works ok but for the PCB it has to be spot on. High tolerances.
Gcode Ripper was a way I did it before however it does not work with Centroid codes. I am looking at editing the source to include and will see if this works. It will take time.

hivoltage wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 3:55 pm ......
Gcode Ripper was a way I did it before however it does not work with Centroid codes. I am looking at editing the source to include and will see if this works. It will take time.

Sure it does work with Centroid, I showed you on the first page of this thread

Uwe

I reported the previous post, but apparently the scammers are now using AI to respond and then sneak a link in that takes you to some pirated or illicit website. Don’t these people have better things to do?