weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

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duggined
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weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by duggined »

Hi Everyone, I am suddenly having a problem between sheetcam and mach3. Everything worked great for at least a year, I use Qcad for design and when the demo timed out the problem started with sheetcam. Oh I did pay for the license at that time thinking maybe that was the problem. The problem is when I post process the file it doesn't show up in mach3 at all, maybe just a little dot on the screen and very little in the gcode area. Now since I licensed the qcad everything is licensed and good, I did have one computer that still would process out of 3 computers but as soon as I took computer that worked out to the cnc table the program didn't work on that one either...I know very confusing and wasn't sure if it was Sheetcam or mach3 but if I run a file that was processed prior to the problem then it works fine...not sure what to do other than constantly reformat the computer and keep starting over. Just uninstalling and reloading doesn't do it. I read all the sheetcam postings and couldn't find anything like this problem.
Any help out there? if any questions feel free to ask.
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Ed
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WyoGreen
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by WyoGreen »

So if I understand this right, you are designing a job in Qcad, then opening it in Sheetcam, and it looks ok there. Then you hit the post button and the resulting g-code is all hosed in Mach3. (and you have sheetcam and Mach3 setup to automatically open the resulting g-code in Mach3) So my questions are: Are you sure you're using the right post in Sheetcam? And have you looked at the g-code file with a text editor to see what it looks like after post-processing it? Some information about your table and plasma cutter would help us help you a little better.

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mike 1948
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by mike 1948 »

Just a thought could Mach3 be working in inch and Sheetcam in MM or vicey, versa?

Mike
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by BTA Plasma »

Either your sheetcam is not licensed or your trying to open a .dxf in mach instead of a gcode file
rikduk
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by rikduk »

It happened to me a couple of times...
When you're post processing, when saving, change your file name.(not extension)
Mach3 should open it.
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by KIDTech »

I have found that Mach does not like any type of file path that is not basic character as in letters. It won't generate the right tool paths if there are anything such as underscores "_" or parenthesis "()" in the file name.
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by acourtjester »

I saw the same thing with % in the file name I found if I renamed the file without that % in it I could open it.
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duggined
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Re: weird problem with sheetcam and mach3

Post by duggined »

I wrote this way back in nov 2014 and shortly after my son had a lot going on, he had a long awaited kidney transplant and I never came back here or even went out in the shop for months but playing around in the shop again. Still having problems with sheetcam, It is lic, and I don't use any char other than letters or numbers, I name the file something different every time as I found out it will not overwrite a file as to rename it. What happens is everything acts right and post great but then when I load it into mach3 it will be a very short file on the left window and just a dot on the right side in mach. And it is set for inch in sheetcam which is what it should be. Only way I can use it again is delete sheetcam then do a search in windows for sheetcam and delete EVERY item except the one reference of sheetcam in the mach3 directory. Then I can go to sheetcam online and download the program again and start from scratch and sometimes I have to do this everyday or sometimes after every use...Hopefully this will give more ideas and if any questions I will check more often
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