Custom Sized Material Input

[avman598]

Aspire seems to only allow materials of a cubic shape. This is basically for cutting products out of sheet material. I do custom crown molding both straight and curved and with other CNC programs I am able to generate a blank material in autocad of the same shape as the blank I will be cutting the molding out of. Is there a method in aspire which will allow me to input a custom material solid so that I can see exactly how the material will be cut?

Wayne

[LittleGreyMan]

Hi Wayne,

AFAIK, it does not. See this post:
http://forum.vectric.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28153&p=203458#p203458

[gkas]

Couldn't you create your custom sized material with a 2 rail sweep? If you already have the profile, then it's ready to go. Am I missing something (wouldn't be the first time )?

[dealguy11]

I've cut a number of pieces of custom straight and curved crown molding with Aspire. As you have noted, Aspire's only shape for starting blank is a cube. However, that has never been much of a hindrance. If I want to create a "blank" as a starting place, I just create a few vectors and fake toolpaths for the blank. If you preview those first, then double click to remove the waste material, then you can more easily see the preview of the toolpaths actually used to cut the profile.

For what it's worth, the right toolpath for this is the Moulding path. I have made these using 3d finishing toolpaths, before the moulding path was available in the software, and had problems both with the speed and finish quality. The moulding toolpath solved these issues.

[avman598]

Using Alphacam, I have been crating a solid the same shape as I will be cutting from. Alphacam allows me to change the solid to a material. This allows me to see exactly the cutting process on the crown molding. It same me from cutting a lot of air also.

[ger21]

Alphacam costs 3-5x more than Aspire.

[avman598]

No 4X as much plus yearly support. I have been using Alphacam for 2 1/2 years. I am not impressed with it at all. I got ticked off at it the other day, did some searchs for other programs and came across Aspire. I had been looking at it before to do more artistic support. I saw that it has a trial version and downloaded it. Did some work with it and was impressed. I had contacted Alphacam before about procuring it through them. I figured that had done some intergration with alphacam mainly for the POST. Alphacam wanted $3500. Playing with it I discovered that it included the POST for our CR Onsrud and that it preformed better than the post that CR Onsrud produced for us. I talked my boss into procuring Aspire directly from Vectric. I have been using it for about a month now and am very pleased with it. I get better results, it compiles magnitudes faster the Alphacam and I don't get strand cuts motions with it. I have only found three things it doesn't do (I think) the Alphacam does. 1. Allow me to input custom material shapes which I generate in Autocad. 2. Easiiy allow me to do multiple incremental horizontal cuts. 3. Allow me to enter G55 spoil board offsets. I have to edit the Gcode file to do this.

[4DThinker]

I start with a rectangle that is close to the width and height of my odd shaped part cuts.
I'll do a quick profile tool path around the shape, no tabs, just so that when I'm looking at a rendering I can have it delete the outside parts that aren't part of the material I'm cutting on. Of course you won't actually cut that profile, but it does help to have it in the list if you want to save a rendering that more closely matches the end result as a preview for a client.

Still, there are many cuts I make that are simply not possible for Aspire to render accurately. Picking a good 0,0,0 origin point to zero the bit at is key to making the actual cutting simpler to do on the CNC.

4D

[ger21]

I use AlphaCAM 7.5 at my day job. It came with our machine, and SCM supplied the post. We don't pay support, and have never upgraded. We'll get a new version when we upgrade to a new machine next year, so the cost is rolled in with the machine. We really only use the nesting, and basic 2D toolpaths.