WAM is absolute crap!!! It is the single reason I wont recommend WAZER to anyone that askes about it. It is the only reason I have to regret buying this product! WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE FIX THIS LAZY PROGRAM??? I have done a lot of 3D work so I know what a good interface looks like and how it functions, and this thing isn’t even in the same universe as the most basic slicer program. It is an insult to be able to buy a $200 3D printer which comes with the most basic program, that does everything that you need, and then pay $11000 for a machine that is equipped with the dog of a program WAM! I mean what the hell guys???
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Hey Lance! I am sorry to hear you feel that way about WAM. I would love to hear what issues you are running into so I can share the feedback with the Dev. team.
Unfortunately there is nothing constructive I can pull from your post at this time so let me ask a few questions:
- What do you find missing from the software?
- What needs do you have that WAM is not meeting?
- Would you prefer something quick/automatic or something with full/manual control that may take a bit more time?
Why?
The team here at WAZER hopes to help improve upon the software in the future - any constructive inputs regarding your inputs and needs will help me to create even more valuable feedback with the Dev. team and I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
I can list a couple things just off the top of my head.
First, on the material selection menu, the cursor changes from a normal mouse pointer to a resizing crosshair-looking thing when hovering over the materials. This should remain as a normal arrow. Pretty simple fix IMO.
Also, on the generate job tab, we should be able to see what feed and pierce time is set for each material setting. For instance, for the fine setting my material has 50 feed and 1s pierce. My medium setting is 60 with 1s, etc. When we click that, we should be able to see this in addition to the cut extents and the estimated time. This would help eliminate mistakenly choosing the wrong material.
Last, give us the ability to zoom out to see the whole bed on the screen at once. Unless I reduce the zoom in Chrome to be too small to read comfortably, you have to pan around the work bed to see the extents of the job.
Those are three simple things you could start with. The reasoning is very clear for each of those items.
Missing from the software is the ability to save projects, a cleaner UI, auto-alignment of multiple parts, and advanced tab placement (corners, vertical, horizontal, centered, etc.), just to name a few off the top of my head.
As it’s been stated from other users including the OP, slicing software that is far more advanced and powerful (but free and open-source) is lightyears ahead of this software. Take examples from other companies like Ultimaker and Prusa to develop better UI and more features. Support your customers so they feel better about supporting you.
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First off on my list would be the ability to reload a saved cut file for editing. The inability to do that cost me hours.
Next would be the ability to grab and change the rotation of an individual file. The digital rotation feature also cost me an inordinate amount of time.
I have a pretty good computer and can run all of my slicer programs with ease and no issues, but wam will freeze on me if I delete any files from the cut bed. And I’ve had other issues similar, it just feels unstable.
Also it doesn’t treat svg. files the same. I use the concepts app to do a lot of my drawing and it often loses the ability to change the cut path. And even within the same file sometimes I’ll be able to change the cut path and sometimes not. I currently have one file sitting on wam with two holes inside the item only one hole has the ability to change the cut path.
The ability to designate the start point for the pierce and cut.
Again I love the machine and we use it constantly, and so it’s incredibly frustrating that this part of it feels so lacking.
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Thanks for sharing! I appreciate the feedback and will share the following points with our dev. team:
- Material Selection Pointer/Mouse Clean-up
- A more visible/accessible pierce and speed rate shown for cut file parameters
- Improved zoom capability. I agree with this feature - a locked ratio or full bed view would be great as I tend to zoom in or out by mistake sometimes haha
- Save cut files or design files for easy reference. The ability to quickly pull up older gcodes/drafts and revise them
- A Cleaner UI (Will have to refer to other software to fully understand - do you have a specific example that you find works nice?)
- Automatic Nesting Function
- Precise tab placement
- SVG Compatibility Improvement
- Freezing Issues Minimized
- Specific start point (right now it will use a tab with a pierce as the start point but it cannot be specified further - I really like this feedback and would appreciate it’s benefits)
The rotation feedback has me a bit confused - perhaps you can provide some clarity? Do you mean a way to rotate by clicking/dragging? The WAM software has the digital rotation as you mentioned but perhaps you are looking for something more peculiar/one-off during your nesting?
I appreciate your time and feedback - if you have more, please feel free to share here or with me at anytime!
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“Rotation” yes definitely a click and drag function.
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Hi All. I completely agree with all these improvement suggestions, but if I may, the main issue for me is the estimated job time, which, most of the time, is completely wrong !
I mean, if it worked properly, if would be a great feature, but it’s really not ! This is really problematic for us, because we are supposed to charge our clients for the time the machine is used, and with this erratic behaviour, it is very difficult to manage.
Most of the time, the estimation is way too low. But in some occasions, it was too high.
And sometimes, it’s even complete nonsense : see attached, with this attempt to estimate cut for 2mm stainless steel. The amount of abrasive is even negative !
It should be a priority to fix this feature, which brings a lot of frustration.
Thanks
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Take examples from Prusa and Ultimaker. Look at their software UI. This is probably the least important point I made though. The functional updates are far more critical.
I will add on to what @Fablab_Descartes said. I have several parts I’ve made where the actual time was far off the estimated time, both up and down. The only particular example would be a part I had to add tabs to. It was at 6 minutes until I added tabs. Then it estimated 23 hours.
Last point I can add is the ability to individually set cut types for each part on the bed. Say in the picture Descartes posted you wanted the two parts on the top to cut centerline and the two on the bottom to cut outside. Right now we can’t do it. But look at Prusa or Bambu’s slicer. You can fill a bed with models and have each of those models print with different settings.
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Thanks for bringing this up! This is a bug that has been high on my priority list too. So far, this is what I know:
When using manual tabs or adding more than the automatic tab placement, estimations can become inaccurate. This is a known bug that the development team is aware of. These estimated times are just incorrect displays and will not affect real cut time or abrasive use.
For the most accurate cut time estimations I recommend to change the setting to no tabs or leave it at automatic. Once an accurate estimation has been recorded, it is safe to go back and adjust tabs manually.
The workaround is not ideal but I hope the team is able to resolve this bug in the future.
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Thanks for the examples around Prusa and Ultimaker - any reference is helpful in learning more!
Hopefully the cut time estimation workaround helps minimize this bug from happening until the team can squash it permanently. Let me know if it does help!
As for the different cut paths for each part - perhaps I am a little confused. If the file is separate, each part can be assigned a different cut path option. However, if the file is imported as a single DXF, then the cut path is assigned to the entire DXF. For example, if I duplicate a single part multiple times, I can assign any of the 3 cut path options to each part.
Are you looking for manual offset manipulation across a single DXF? Using the example Fablab shared previously, if all 4 of those parts are in a single DXF it would not be possible. However, if the parts were imported individually you could achieve what you are looking for
I assume he is using a batched DXF file because currently we do not have the option to save a job layout from WAM. If we could save a WAM layout so we can open it again and reuse the same layout of parts or adjust them and repost the code, multi part DXFs become less necessary. Saving a job layout is usually a standard feature in slicers like this.
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Thanks, I did not notice that this bug was related to manual tabs use ! The workaround will help us a lot, while waiting for the final fix.
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A scale ruler along the x and y vectors! The 3X3 squares is okay in general, but being able to see where the features you were trying to cut in comparison to the size of your material would be enormously helpful!!
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Make WAM downloadable and not reliant on being logged into the internet and your site. It makes it incredibly slow and buggy!! I’M SITTING HERE THIS VERY MOMENT WITH A BIG JOB AND I’M ABSOLUTELY STUCK BECAUSE WAM FREEZES!!! Hate this program soooo much!!! $11000 and this is the interface???
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And that notification about positioning!!! The option to turn that stupid thing off!!
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Or once the part is back in position for it to close itself!
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Nice to see that I am not the only one who thinks that WAM is total garbage. I have been complaining since I bought this machine. I have given specific suggestions so “they” already know. Now improving WAM is on the “wish list” with no target date. Wazer and the crappy software are four years old!!! Last they said it was on the to do list. WTF. What is on my “wish list” now is that I wish I never bought this thing. There are too many problems with WAM, bad implementation clunky interface frequent crashes etc etc and just plain worthless.
I bought a laser engraver for about $400 and bought $65 LightBurn to run it. I love the program, it makes WAM look like the piece of crap that it is. Running a Laser is little different from running a waterjet machine. Both are quite simple two axis CNC machines. The laser has a PWM laser control, the Wazer has two valves for water and abrasive. Cutting is done by moving rapid to a start position running a pierce macro, running G1 segment by segment until a new pierce is needed. This is trivial it is not rocker surgery. I contacted LightBurn development and asked if they were interested in writing a decent program for the Wazer. They might but this is really the responsibility of Wazer. Their software is total crap and many people agree, At least one other person contacted LightBurn development as well. Wazer you need to hire LightBurn or someone equally competent to write decent software. You say you are hardware people well you got the hardware pretty much OK so WTF not hire someone to write good software? How long do we need to wait? Does it make economic sense to make decent software such a low priority?
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So, it’s been a month and 5 days since this feedback. We have a very reasonable list of attainable items here. Even if some of them are subjective (the UI and the cursor), much of this seems relatively straightforward. The community has people coding in their free time fixing some of the issues that WAM is falling short on.
My request is a simple one: Give us a SMART-style goal on when these items can be achieved. (SMART is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, realistic, and TIME bound). Strong emphasis on the timing of this. From what I understand, WAM has been around for a few years and it seems these issues are all foreign to you. A specific example of a SMART goal is this: “WAZER will fix the pointer/cursor error before Thanksgiving by changing the cursor to a regular arrow-style pointer.”
@Alex , I don’t target you, I target your company. I was in food service for 11 years and retail for 4, managing for a total of about 9 years. I know the pain of having a company that doesn’t value its customers, or worse, its employees.
I know this is reasonable to the customer, but what does WAZER think of it? Give us some real, human feedback. Feel free to forward this to whoever.
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THIS!! Right here! Come on, please we’re begging you. I love this machine and use it a lot but I would love it a lot more with a better interface.
This is a great follow-up and I personally agree on the timing! Unfortunately if I were to give you an answer on when any feedback can be implemented, I could not say because I do not know.
I see now that this is unacceptable to our customers. I apologize if any of our user base has lost value in our company or product because of these WAM issues. Please know that WAZER values ALL of our user base and it’s employees.
The team is hard at work and will take your feedback around WAM and run with it when the time comes. So please, continue to share here on the forum and email me anytime with any feedback or frustrations. I will personally do my best to help improve or provide a work-around as a short term solution until a more long-term solution is available.
The feedback shared here is reasonable beyond doubt. Personally, I would love to see all of these changes and more!
So the question is when? Let me poke the internal team a bit harder and see if I can get a more specific answer by next week.
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