Developing a polar axis machine is one thing. The next step was making it easy to use. However, almost all Slicer/CAM software are creates cartesian coordinates based g-code. Instead of re-inventing cam software for polar axis with less features, I decided to develop a converter tool?. So you can simply create your g-code in any software and use my converter to convert it to polar g-codes.
Click here to go to the online converter tool
The converter is not specific to the polarBears. It’s a universal tool. Feel free to use with other polar machines.
It’s open source : https://github.com/kadirilkimen/polarToolsJS
Cartesian coordinates work very straightforward. We give the X distance and the Y distance to define any point. Cartesian cnc machines usually have linear rails for each axis. We want the machine to go to X:4 and Y:5. The cnc machine moves the X axis to 4 and the Y axis to 5 from the previously given point. There it is. The tooltip is on the point.
Polar coordinates work very differently. Instead of giving two linear distances in X and Y, we should give an “angle” and a “radius”. Polar cnc machines usually have a rotary axis and a linear axis. Therefore, the machine rotates the rotary axis to -38.8 degrees and moves the linear axis to 6.4. There it is. The tooltip is on the same point.