MeshCAM v3 Crashing

[Randy]

Not that it helps you, Martin but I'm running an Nvidia Quadro FX 370 board on my desktop PC and MC takes it in stride. It must be a Win7 interaction somehow. And I'm impressed that you can even get a Windows PC to boot on only 384MB these days, much less have memory left over for apps!

Randy

[Gerry]

And I've been running a 7800GT for a few years, and just put a 9800GT in Friday, and it still works fine for me.

[blowlamp]

I don't think I've seen this message before so I'm posting the picture on the forum in the hope that it's of some use to Robert. It throws the error when I use a Ballnose tool and crashed for me when I used a Bullnosed tool.

Capture.PNG (116.53 KiB) Viewed 311 times

Martin.

[Randy]

Martin, if you post your tool definition (or attach your tools.txt) and toolpath parameters I'll try to duplicate your run here. All that is in the mcf file is the model and stock size. The program zero is in kind of a nonconventional place also--at the top of the stock, but on the southwest X-Y corner of the model itself. And there is no Z stock margin around the part. Did you intend that?

Randy

[blowlamp]

Randy.
Having tried this for myself on an XP system, I don't think it'll reproduce for you. In any case, all the Windows 7 systems I've tried MeshCAM on crash before very long with no special settings. Just as long as you play with different tool profiles it shouldn't be too hard for someone to repeat.
***Update***
Giving a Z stock margin to the job seems to have reduced the crashes so I can at least generate toolpaths, but check out those strange toolpaths employing a Roughing pass, using a 0.375" Ballmill with 3D Roughing enabled!

Martin.

toolpaths.PNG (288.34 KiB) Viewed 305 times

[Randy]

Yeah, that's what I call the "castellation". Extraneous up-and-down dithering between two successive Z roughing levels (actually, in a screenshot I sent to Robert it jumped up 5 levels at some points...). Doesn't affect the quality of the roughing but sure does waste machine time (and cause unneccessary wear). Robert is aware of that and has been working to reduce it.

What are you using for toolpath tolerance, Martin? I keep it pegged at .0001" and that seems to help the smoothness of the paths a lot (notwithstanding the dithering, that is).

I don't think that I will ever go to Win7. I didn't go to XP until midway through 2006, when nLite installations had proven to be stable enough at taking out all the bad stuff--IE, OE, messenger, auto-update, remote desktop, any M$ processes that communicate with the outside world. But I don't see any advantage at this point of going beyond XP. And it runs MeshCAM pretty well!

Randy

[blowlamp]

I'd appreciate some feedback on this as I'm down to 11 days on my trial license and haven't been able to give it a workout yet.

Thanks.
Martin.

[Randy]

Martin, given the amount of serious testing and problem reporting you're doing ("poking at the edges" in a way) I shouldn't think that Robert will have a problem extending your trial license.

What tolerance are you using for the toolpath generation? If not at .0001", give that a try. In my experience there is a marked improvement in the smoothness of the toolpath when going even from .0005" to .0001".

I'm sorry that I'm not in a position to cross-check your Win7 experience. Well, not sorry enough to try installing Win7 on any of my machines...

Randy

[blowlamp]

Well Randy, I keep giving MC v3 a try, but I don't think I'm really pushing at the boundaries with anything I'm doing. It's the simple things like specifying a Ballnose tool in place of an Endmill or swapping the 3D Roughing option that provoke it to bomb out, rather than using an extreme tolerance setting.
One thing for sure though is that MC v3 isn't yet compatible with Windows 7, at least on the 3 systems I've tried it on.

As far as operating systems are concerned I'm pretty neutral.

Macs are overpriced and overrated in my view with little to no software that will do CAD/CAM etc, and what's the point of running Windows through Parallels?

I've tried Linux but find it very hard to use in some respects, and although there is some good software there is nothing that I need.

XP is/was good with very few problems.
Vista was installed on my better half's computer and has run without any of the drama that others seem to have had.

When Windows 7 was released we bought a 3 license family pack at a cost of about £50 per system, which I consider to be fair value and I really do use most of the new facilities it has. But the overwhelming factor in any of this is that at some point you just have to bite the bullet because it has become the new norm and everbody and everything else has moved on.

I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but in a way it's all we've got and until something better comes along we're stuck with it.

I might add that MC v3 is the only program that I've tried that doesn't run properly under Win 7. As far as I've tested MC v2, that does seems to run ok.

Martin.

[Randy]

Well Randy, I keep giving MC v3 a try, but I don't think I'm really pushing at the boundaries with anything I'm doing.

I was referring to running it under Win7. You're the first one I've heard of running (trying to run) under MS latest and baddest OS.

Under XP (which I have gotten to mostly trust by now) MeshCAM does run wonderfully. If I remember right, MS does allow a "downgrade" to XP with your existing Win7 license...

Randy