[cadcam]

So all we are looking for is what is free, if so you will be limited for sure the statment from Dcarr makes sense and not only because Mastercam Art can do all he stated.

[--colin--]

If you want to carve a few photos for a hobby application, it's certainly not necessary to spent large amounts of money for specialty programs, like Artcam, Bobart, Photovcarve or Imagecarve. These programs all have nice features and do professional work and are probably just the ticket for someone doing lots of engraving as a profession.

Photo engraving is included free as a basic feature in Mach software and it works good. You don't get the nice visualization tools and editing features, but the G-code is produced for free from any bitmap image.

Meshcam is an excellent 3D contouring CNC program that also does nice photo engraving and has excellent visualization capability. It costs about $150 or so.

DeskCNC is also a nice CNC program that does photo engraving and carving extremely well. It cost about $250 as I recall and cuts all three type of photo carvings mentioned earlier.

These programs typically convert levels of grayscale to different cut depths. You choose the maximum depth of cut and the program ratios the depth accordingly. One tends to think of these carvings as 3D by if you try to carve too deeply, the effect is poor. It's best to limit cutting depth to less than 60mils for best results. It also works best with a high quality photograph. If you photo is grainy and pixelated, the craving results will be too.

Theres are some examples on my web site that were done with Meshcam and DeskCNC. Carving photos is perhaps the easiest thing to do with a CNC router and I certain recommend giving it a try for anyone just getting started.

[Transam]

I see. It's just that I don't need anything else than grayscale to g-code with mill diameter calculated. I do know that high-end software is superp in many ways. It's just that I don't really need the extras for my purposes. I don't feel like spending lots of money on something that is simple. It feels like you can almost make the program yourself! It isn't very complicated I think. I know lots of open software that does more advance things than what I'm looking for. Opencam for instance would be perfect, but I can't figure out how to save the g-code.