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from sample to cad

6/17/15       
james Member

Hello all,

I have someone that wants me to cut some complex pieces on my CNC and I am trying to figure out the best way to get their samples into my CAD. Normally I would just draw the pieces, simple enough, but these pieces have a bunch of different radius portions I am having a little difficulty working through. Any bright ideas? I use AlphaCam with a Omnitech router.

Thanks!

6/18/15       #2: from sample to cad ...
Mark

I do this with short runs of standing and running trim all the time, since it is cheaper and has a faster turnaround than buying new shaper steel for up to say 40 or 50 foot runs. Carefully trace the profile or shape onto a piece of paper, I usually use 8-1/2 by 11 and scan it into my computer. The scan comes in as a tiff. We also have a large format printer scanner and though I rarely have the need to, it works just as well.
Convert the scan to a jpeg ( Irfanview works well for this) and import as an image into Alphacam. Then use a series of lines, circles and 3 point arcs to trace the edges of the scanned image to get the geometry. If your metric to imperial setting are the same on all programs involved it comes out full scale every time.
Alphacam seems to choke on trying to import very large jpegs, say larger than 12 by 12 inches. If so, and you need to do say a corbel that is 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall, just scale the jpeg by a factor of say 10, then import into Alphacam. Once you have it traced, rescale the geometry, (not the jpeg) within Alphacam. You can then print or plot the profiles to verify you have everything perfect without cutting samples on the cnc. It's very accurate, I did a 10 inch profile yesterday in about 5 minutes, and the finished product split the pencil line along the entire profile. It will probably take a a few tries the first time or two, but once you get the hang of it, it is very fast.
I would imagine a similar scheme would work in AutoCAD, Draftsight or any number of other softwares.

6/19/15       #3: from sample to cad ...
james Member

I will give that a shot this afternoon. Thanks!

7/22/15       #4: from sample to cad ...
Russ

Website: http://www.mirror-reflections.com

James
Take the easy route, cut a sample on your saw the cleaner the cut the better the image.
Place the wood piece on your scanner, scan and crop the image, then save it as a Jpeg or bitmap, import to your cad system, use tangent circles lines and arcs to create a drawing with no broken lines, cnc machinery will not cut unless everything connects properly.
This should reduce your time frame substantially.
I hope that helps
Russ


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