Lazy Cam Mach3 Tutorial

FACE OPERATION 88. PROFILE TURN 90. MACH3 TURN CONFIGURATION 92. Page 2 of 123. LAZYCAM MANUAL 8/18/2009 REV:1. Mach 3 ve lazycam uygulamaları. Wood cnc mach 3 and lazycam applications.

As I said in my first post about my little CNC mill I am currently using the trial version of Mach3 to control the machine. Included along with Mach3 is a trial version of LazyCam which will (supposedly) convert DXF files into G-code after you input the tool info, offsets etc. There are no instructions with Lcam but there are tutorial videos. I actually purchased a disk with all of the videos and current programs so I could watch them when not connected to the internet. I have watched everything 2 or 3 times and felt fairly comfortable, I thought. My first real project came up.

Dell oem windows server 2008 foundation x64 and x86. I drew the items up in Autocad 2002, sent everything to a single layer and saved it as an Acad R12 DXF. (Come to find out later that a 3rd party freeware file is actually needed to convert the acad dwg file into DXF or Lcam wont load it. Another story) So I load the dxf into Lcam, arrainge my tool paths and offsets and everything looks pretty good. I click on the 'post g-code' button, the text at the bottom says it did but I get nothing.

Even with it set to automatically load G-code into mach3, nothing. What am I missing? Finally after several hours I gave up and wrote the g-code manually by typing it into notepad.

I guess I can't really complain because it is a free trial version, but what good is a CAM program that won't post? I hear this all the time.and we see it with DXF files provided to us by customers when they 'won't machine' because the code is bogus.so OUR software is bad.when in reality. You might want to check the concurrency of your DXF elements in the DXF file. If the endpoints of the lines / arcs don't actually 'meet' some of these CAM products won't create a path. This means digging into the DXF file and line by line checking the actual coordinates of the end points that are SUPPOSED to meet. Looking at them on the screen isn't accurate enough.

Remember, you machine tool works to 0.001' or 0.0001' while a plotter / printer only cares about what it LOOKS LIKE.and if the end points don't exactly match, doesn't care a hoot. Remember, having them all on the same layer doesn't actually mean that they meet. Some CAM systems barf if the elements are on different Z coordinates. Bill is probably on the right track - the endpoints of your line segments may not be concurrent, which means no machinable region is being defined to create g-code for. You can verify this theory with a simple test. Make a new drawing that contains a single circle that is larger in dia than the endmill you will use to cut the part with.

Build your dxf and g-code from this single circle drawing and see if it cuts. You should be able to cut it as a perimeter cut or a pocket cut, depending on how you set your software. Since there (theoretically) aren't any endpoints to be open in a simple circle this will test if your CAM SW is actually getting the g-code or if the problem is that there is no code generated because the open line segments don't define a machinable region. I tried the polygon feature, 8 sides. Tried a couple of other contours. Still nothing. Ran a search on my C drive to see if it was posting a file anywhere, found nothing.

I searched through the forums for Lcam and saw where people had this problem occasionally, re-opened and it would post. I am not so lucky. I searched for and downloaded a freeware CAM program, can't remember the name right now (I'm at work).