[estes53]

All I want to do, to start with, is to carve commercially available designs (i.e. Vector Art 3D, Inc. - Dimensional Clip Art for CNC Routing and Engraving) into wood.
The common file types seem to be STL, RLF or V3M.
All I have found so far to convert the files to gcode is MeshCam, which is expensive, and has all kinds of stuff that I will probably never use.
Anybody have advice on other options?

Thanx, Alan

[ger21]

Vector Art 3D offers a free program to do this, called 3D machinist.
Vector Art 3D, Inc. - Dimensional Clip Art for CNC Routing and Engraving - Download Free 3D Models

It only works with designs purchased from them, though.

[mcphill]

STLs can be toolpathed in a lot of CAM packages. I know BobCAD and DeskProto both can use them.

[estes53]

BobCad is only slightly less money and seem to have a bad reputation.

Am going to try DeskProto (trial).

[estes53]

So far, like DeskProto, but there is one really strange thing.
When you generate a .nc, it saves it as .iso, then you have to rename it before Mach4 will recognize it.


OK- the problem was that even though it said "nc" what it meant was gcode for whatever machine you specified in setup. When I changed setup to Mach3 it started saving as .tap.

[ger21]

You might also want to look at CamBam.