Profile Modeller issues

[Nick M Singer]

I have a couple of problems relating to Profile Modeller and CN.
1) When is Thermwood going to fix the metric isues with PM, This is long outstanding, There is a conversion issue where the thickness of the material is taken from MM to inches taking the z axis out of bounds.
2) I tried to use the new feature of CN where it will nest a batch of doors with mouldings on them, avoiding using PM seperately and found that the all panels that have hinge holes to be drilled will obviously be done as flip ops but the side that is being done as a flip op is the moulded side which kind of defeats the purpose, You still have to do each panel individually as you would in PM. The solution would be to leave all hinge boring out but it would be easier to have the hinge holes done on the flip op.
3) I have a number of door panels in the batch that were created by inserting door panels in ecabs viz. not on cabinets. These panels are not being moulded at all.Why?
Have a nice weekend, I am licking my wounds as yet another gang of criminals have been voted into power.

[Nick M Singer]

OK this one is being roundly ignored, I will refer to the Thermwood team.

[Daniel Vonderheide]

Nick,

You're not being ignored. I apologize if you feel that you are.

I'm having trouble finding the conversion issue in Profile Modeler you are describing. I created a sample panel that was 1 inch thick and sent it to Profile Modeler as a twd in both imperial and metric. I wrote cnc for both panels in metric and in imperial and all 4 programs were fine. What version of Profile Modeler do you have installed?

You are correct, all the mdf doors that have hinge holes will have the profiles cut as the flip operation. There are a few different reasons I can think of for this. If the profile is done first, there may not be enough surface area left on the face of the door for the vacuum to hold it properly while doing the flip operation. If the profiles for some odd reason cut the complete door face then the door will be thinner than expected and the hinge holes performed during the flip operation would be shallow.

I need more information on these panels before I can really say what's going on. Were these doors saved as assemblies? Were these doors saved as cabinets? Did you apply a profile tool that was already in ecabinets or did you create a new one? If you created a new one, how did you create the geometry? Was it in ecabinets or was it in another cad system? There's just not enough information here.

Please send me a detailed email at program@thermwood.com explaining the conversion error and the missing profiles in more detail. If you can send example files, please do so.

[Will Williamson]

Nick
Are you using AutoCad For Dxf Files?

[Nick M Singer]

Hi Will
Thanks for your reply. I understand the reasoning for doing the profile on the flip op so in future I will leave the hinges off the cabinet and drill them manually. I stand corrected on the non moulding of panels, now that I have run the job further I see that in fact the doors that were just inserted individually into the job are machining but I am getting doors that are on cabinets that are not machining (the profile part) I am getting some lables with bar codes for flip ops and some not, even though all doors have the same profile moulding. The moulding process works fine from Control Nesting and there are no "out of bounds" errors but if you run the same job in PM it happens. I also sent a sample file to the Thermwood guys in Johannesburg who have sent it on to you guys, I like them, can see nothing strange in the code that can create this error. It happened before (about a year ago) and we added or edited a line with a factor that corrected it but I can not remember what we did.
We are using the latest version of eCabs, Contol Nesting and Profile Modeller.
I am creating the whole job using eCabs not ACad but I do use ACad and TCad to create DXFs if need be. All the doors were created in the door editor of eCabs using one of the standard mouldings in the library and the profile is cut using a ball cutter and small flat end. All in all pretty standard stuff. Tha ones that have been machined look great.

[Nick M Singer]

Hi again Will
More clarity on "the problem"
I ran the balance of the job today and stand corrected. It is not the "inserted panels" that are not being moulded it is random cabinet doors and it seems to be a problem from eCabs when it generates the TWD. I noticed that it has somehow changed some doors from what are clearly moulded doors to unmoulded slabs. Furthermore on my last sheet the Router cut holes into the face of a moulded panel and the machining compared to the nesting was completely out of whack, and than the machine locked up with "y axis out of bounds" error

[Will Williamson]

The reason i ask about Auto Cad is that I have had simular problems in the last few months with the control writing code that did not reflect the information that I had intered in Auto Cad. And the real problem was that it was not consistant by that I mean the control would write code for something unexpected and when I repeated the operation it would do something different. This was first noticed after updating my CN. So I was convinced that there was a problem with the new update. But could never prove it. As time has gone on we have traced most all of the problem back to operater error , working late so forth and so one. These probblems seam to show up when i keep sending the same file to the machine over and over again.
I've always though that Auto Cad was solid as a rock but here lately Daniel has helped me trace these problems back to my autocad files . I,m using AC2000
Well that my 2 cents worth

[Daniel Vonderheide]

Can you send me the twd file along with your export from the macine and the cnc file that was causing the issue. I would really like to get this resolved for you. program@thermwood.com

[Nick M Singer]

Will I have had problems in the past with CAD genertated DXFs relating to cutter comp especially when trying to machine numbers, I resolved this by using MasterCam where there is a greater degree of control over each tool path.
Daniel I will send you the files but in the meantime I am going to regenerate the offending cabs and their doors and try again. As far as the machining errors seen yesterday, sometimes my Thermwood simply has a bad hair day and goes on the fritz, a reboot and a Valium normally bring it back again. I will try to remachine the sheet again well above the material and see what happens.

[Daniel Vonderheide]

The issues you are having is caused by having the grain set to 90 degrees when you apply the drawers to the cabinet, even though the material does not have grain turned on. To resolve this, make sure that the grain is set to 0 degrees when you apply a MDF drawer.