Good day,

I've been posting on various cnc and software forums for the past while and have gotten some great help and advice.  We've made progress, but for every step forward, we take 3 back.  I try to give a brief history of the issues...

Brand new to all of this.  New 4 x 4 plasma table purchased last year - my husband assembled it.  Hypertherm PM45 with machine torch.  Using Corel X8 and Sheetcam TNG on pc with windows 10 and Mach3 on separate pc with no internet connection using windows XP.  Could not cut a clean file from the beginning - jagged edges, wobbles/waves.  Started with the mechanical side of things - we basically took the table apart, put it back together, received some upgraded parts (motor, gears), squared it off a dozen or more times, hardwired it, bolted it to the floor to avoid any possible movement...and the list goes on.  To us, it then seemed accurate and ran smoothly.  Next Corel Draw...fixed some glitches in the software and now export all drawings in SVG format - appears much cleaner in sheetcam than DXF.  Next Sheetcam...all imported drawings look clean and toolpath looks accurate - no deviations from the drawing.  We've worked a great deal with the settings and now have them set to where we think works best for our setup.  Finally Mach3...again, we've received a great deal of feedback and we played with the settings a fair amount, but the end result is always the same.  The torch "judders" in random areas (yes, we've experimented relentlessly with the CV settings) and several arcs look flat - especially in fonts.  We've experimented and simple files come out much cleaner - more detailed files have several errors in them.  I'm posting some screenshots of a file that we've been working with, some of our current settings and some pics of the end result - a heads up, because of all of the issues, we've attached a pen to the torch and have been drawing all of our files - wasting too much metal.

Please let me know if there is any other info that would help to diagnose the issue and I'll be more than happy to provide it.

Thank you!!
Jodi

There will be a couple of posts due to the number of attachments...thanks for your patience.
Attach 1 - Screenshot of imported file in Sheetcam with drawing import settings
Attach 2 - Screenshot of toolpathed file in Sheetcam
Attach 3 - General Config settings in Mach3
Attach 4 - X axis motor tuning settings

This is a continuation of my last post Sheetcam - Mach3 Help.  Some technical issues so I had to start a new topic.

Some pics that I took of my drawing...though only a couple of errors shown, they are throughout the drawing.

Any help you can offer would be much appreciated!
Jodi

Having a bit of a hard time posting screenshot of z axis motor tuning settings:
Steps per - 25551.17329
Velocity - 12
Accel - 6
G's - 0.015541
Step Pulse - 5
Dir Pulse - 5

I'm guessing it's not in your Mach settings and if your machine is ridged I'd look very closely at the three or four lines of code where your error is. Even draw them out at 10 X scale and you may find it's doing just what it's been told to do. Sometimes the CAD program does not fit lines and curves well and the cam program treats them differently. Does your CAD produce short line segments or lines and arcs? Is your post processor posting in the same format as the CAD? Sometimes things get lost in the translation.

Tony

Another thing you may try in copying the code from just the bad object and paste it in a new file. Run it two or three times and see if the error is in the same place. Rotate it, run it again  and see what it looks like.