If the CAM program was included as part of the machine purchase... I think the folks who sold you
the machine should take care of this...
Its possible that you aren't clicking the correct boxes in the Cam program.. Its possible the
post sucks... Either way, its a NEW machine that had the CAM program INCLUDED.. It should all
work, and the dealer should make sure it all works, and if it doesn't, they should fix it... Weather
FIXING it involves a post that works, or a bit of tech support and training for you, doesn't matter,
they should FIX IT.
Believe me, I agree with you. I have spent many hours on the phone, email conversations, and remote tech sessions with support from the table manufacture. They have always been polite, and very helpful.
The fact is that Enroute 6 is fantastic for most people who want an easy way to draw parts and cut them (it is CAD/CAM but we use other CAD programs). But Enroute does not have easy to change post processors. I have reached out directly to Enroute (since we are a customer) and haven't heard anything back. The table manufacturer has also worked with Enroute to create different post processors in the past, but found them to have inconsistent issues causing bad parts, and potential machine crashes.
Additionally, the 4th axis cam is pretty janky. Basically you unroll (flatten) the part using sheet metal tools in your CAD program. This is standard enough, but this is where it gets weird. You import that drawing into Enroute and stretch the drawing in the axis that the rotary axis is replacing (in our case X) to 360 inches. The diameter of the piece that you are cutting does not matter for this. The 4th axis is configured to move 1 degree if the gcode tells the A axis to move 1 inch. So one rotation is 360 inches as far as the cam is concerned. The post processor has no idea there is even an A axis. Once the gcode is created, you have to manually change all X's to A's in the program (thank you whoever created Find and Replace!).
There is a way to change the 4th axis to degrees per minute instead of inches per minute. I just haven't figured it out quite yet.
This is OKAY, but is cumbersome. We got the rotary axis to do some of our more complicated tube cuts for SAE Baja and SAE formula teams in our college. The problem with this is that the A axis can't take i or j moves. So the "enable arcs" setting has to be disabled. So theoretically the curves are turned into lots of tiny lines. But with the drawing stretched from less than 3 inches (the circumference of our tube) to 360 inches, the curves become nearly straight lines themselves. So the gcode ends up being super short and we get trapezoids cut out of the ends of our tubes instead of semicircles with a radius of whatever tube they are getting welded to.
This is the best solution that the manufacturer tech support could come up with. It worked for a while, until Enroute started making really short gcode with long straight lines.
Enroute does have some sort of wrap function, but the video below is the entirety of what I have found about it.
Intro to Using a Mesh with Lathe in EnRoute - YouTube
When we started looking for a plasma table with a 4th axis, this company was eager to do test cuts on our material. Out of my own pocket (as a student that uses the shop), I ordered $60 worth of material and had it shipped directly to them for test cuts. We developed sample cad files in 3 different programs and sent it to them. They promised the machine would do it (technically there isn't anything physically preventing this about the machine). The test cuts were never done, but an order for the table was placed anyway.
I am currently contacting anyone I can find that has CAM for plasma tube/pipe work. However, we don't have much money remaining to purchase a good software package, since that was not something we thought we would need when we raised funding for the table purchase.
