New here. Not sure where to post this question.

[chuckt]

Thanks guys. I ran my first production run yesterday. I cut 25 pieces flawlessly. I have actually been working on this for about a year. It's great to be actually cutting parts now. This particular job takes me about 4 hours to do manually for 25 parts. With the new machine, it took just under an hour. I can probably reduce that further by not using exceedingly cautious parameters, but for now, I am really happy.

I am also really happy to find QCAD/CAM. I have been using QCAD for a long time and I know it well. I have been trying to figure out how to use BobCAD but that is extreme overkill for what I need to do. It was a mistake to buy it. Live and learn. I have tried other CAM programs like CamBam and DXF2GCODE. QCAD/CAM is exactly what I need for now.

I also think I found a bug in my controller. The M30 instruction does not seem to be working correctly. Now that I have figured out the quirks I will probably do a post processor, just so I don't have to make changes to each new program.

As an aside, I would like to see a "description" field in the profile dialog that would be added to the code as a comment. A header comment in the configuration dialog would be nice, too. When I load up a program in my controller, I can see the first 10 lines or so. It would be nice to be able to verify which program I am about to run. As it is, I add a comment manually before I take the code to the machine. It would also be nice to be able to set a default post processor.

[andrew]

Thanks for your kind feedback. I'm glad to hear QCAD/CAM is useful for you.

As an aside, I would like to see a "description" field in the profile dialog that would be added to the code as a comment.

Perhaps, you can use the toolpath name for this. It's available to postprocessors as the variable [TOOLPATH_NAME].

A header comment in the configuration dialog would be nice, too. When I load up a program in my controller, I can see the first 10 lines or so. It would be nice to be able to verify which program I am about to run. As it is, I add a comment manually before I take the code to the machine.

I've added a feature request at:
https://www.qcad.org/bugtracker/index.p ... sk_id=1940

It would also be nice to be able to set a default post processor.

See:
Edit > Application Preferences > CAM > CAM Export

[CVH]

I can see the first 10 lines or so

That is fairly universal.
Voted for it, even as not-Qcam subscriber.

Regards,
CVH

[chuckt]

For what it's worth, I uploaded my first cut at a post processor script for MASSO. It seems to do everything that I need it to. Any suggestions or critique is greatly appreciated.