Hi all,
I new to Mastercam so I don't have enough expirience with it to directly address the concerns that have risen from one of our depts here at work. I posted a similar message over at the eMastercam site, as well.
Our graphics department has recently requested to get some sort of training in setting up illustrator files for us to cut on our router in the shop. We've had some success in this but it takes a little work to get right. A project was done about 6 months ago, where one of our programmers had to cut a bunch of graphic panels that were shaped like people, having a printed image on them.
A few issues were run into in getting this complete. It turned out the graphics when printed didn't quite match the clipping path created in Illustrator for cutting on the router. So after the files were turned over to the shop, the vector files needed a bit of editing in Rhino3D to make the vectors match the actual printed graphic, due to some distortion in the printing process, then the cutting began.
It all worked out well in the end, but our graphics dept sees the intermediate step as unecessary, and feels the files should be able to be brought right into MC and ready to cut. I tried to explain to them that no matter where the file comes from either 2D or 3D there is always the possibility that it may need some editing on the shop end to make things work.
They are requesting to get some sort of training that will better help them prepare the files for us programmers. We've thought about bringing in someone from one of our other offices that deals with similar types of work. But in that they are not using Mastercam. They have a propritary software that came with their Gerber Router. So I thought I would pose the question to the forum and ask for some help.
Does anyone know of any tutorials or customized training options that would address this? I've been to the basic MC class so far, and need to attend the more advanced classes, and it seems to me that the regular classes wouldn't address this issue for our graphics dept.
Any help you guys can provide would be useful.
Thanks,
Chris