Page 239 - CNC Robotics

CNC Robotics

move fol lowing a z-axis move to - 0.25 is a cutting or plotting
move w ith th e to ol at 1/4-inch below the surface of the material.
With this in mi nd, notice how KCam goes about plotting th ese
lines. KCam starts at the begin ning of the last li ne dra wn on the
page and proceeds to travel back to the beginning of every previ-
ous line before it drops the z-ax is down to cut. Thi s doubles the
amount of time it would take your mach ine to complete th e pro-
gram. Considering all the wa sted travel time, see the plot of
Iinetest.plt in Fig ure 10. 15.

Figure 10.15 . 1,,' ><1
How Keam plots em '0''''
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When KCam imports a file, it plots cutting lines as red and tra vel
lines as blue in the plot window. But w hen an HPGL file is import-
ed, most of th e tra vel lines are also red. To change the tra vel lines
from red to blue, use th c G-code w indow and edi t Gal to GOO at
every x and y coordinate command following a z mo ve to travel
depth. After yo u are finished editing, click the Compile bu tton at
the bo ttom of th e Editor w indow and the plot w il l be regenerated
with tra vel lines blue. Of course, this isn't a problem if the G-code
file is sma ll, but it becomes very impracti cal if the file con sists of
thousands of li nes. The co lor of the lines plott ed in th e plot w in-
dow won't affect the actual mo vem ent s of the mach ine needed to
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