gumbe4ux

Software For Complex and Intricate shapes

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Im brand new on the forum and extremely desperate. I really hope you guys can help me with an answer so here it goes. I currently work for an aircraft company that deals in interior parts for some big hitters in the industry Lockheed, boeing, gulfstream etc. I work in the paint department and part of my job is masking parts for electrical contact points. some of the stuff I work on Ive had to do manually and it has required a CNC 2d template from a waterjet. this is something the programming guys put together using a program called mastercam. (massive pain in the you know what). recently my boss bought me a plotter not sure what brand.. its fairly cheap its about 12inches width and it came with a copy of Signmaster cut. it cuts a medium known as green echo dot film. It does the job great. I can make squares and put radiuses in the corners pretty well..  some of the work I do is extremely detail oriented and requires measurements down to .000, it can have negative and positive radiuses, angled lines you name it.. I just haven't been able to do it with signmaster. I can technically freehand the exact shape I need. I just don't have a way to enter the data accurately from the blueprint so when I cut it out everything lines up. So here is the question..  do you guys know of a software or solution that I could use to tackle this with? is there any software that would let me implement a mastercam extension? I am desperate on a fix for this.. been fighting it for about 3 months now. id love to show a blueprint of some of the stuff I work with , but due to ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations). Its a no go. AKA potentially charged with treason.. most of the stuff ive been working on lately is for the F16 Hornet. Any Questions or ideas are surely welcome...

thank you all,

-Chase

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Can you export a .eps file out of MasterCam?  I know nothing about MasterCam but if you've already got a usable file in that format I would try to get it exported out of MasterCam into a .eps/.svg/.ai/etc. that you may be able to import into Inkscape/Adobe Illustrator/etc.  

Once you get the file taken care of you're probably gonna need something better than a cheap cutter to get the kind of tolerance you're looking for. 

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Inkscape would be a bit better than Signmaster I believe, but your best bet would be to use a true CAD program that can export to a format you can open with Signmaster, try to stay away from DXF format though. That file format typically does not have the line segments joined, so while it'll look good, it won't cut well.

Think you have a typo on your plane designation. :) the F16 is the Falcon, or Viper as the pilots call it. The F18 is the Hornet.

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Your correct.. I work in the industry and cant even think of the correct plane.. I just got off my 3rd 12hr shift. I cant even think.. Suprised I didnt call the f16 a jumbo jet. Lol:rolleyes:.. Unfortunately I think the only option is DXF according to the file list. The F16 is the falcon. F35 is the lightning 2.  Thank you guys for your input. I know in my original post I stated some very fine precision. On the F35 ive got as much as a .100 tolerance. Lockheed is quite forgiving.. Most of the stuff Ive had cut out has been + or —  in the hundredths from my original input. So far inspection hasnt kicked it back. I can import  .eps which is good. Im not sure if master cam will import  .eps I think if so.. It will need a special extension. So you guys think inkscape might be worth looking into? 

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Inkscape will do a lot of what Adobe Illustrator can do... and it's free.  Wonder if you could export as a dxf, import that into Inkscape and then node edit to fix all it issues with the dxf file?

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Inkscape does have a script to join segment ends. It works pretty well but does take some tweaking to get it right and will probably still need to do some node editing to get it just right.

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