[owenransen]

My program outputs STL files, but some customers have asked for CNC output. I'm a complete novice in CNC and so would welcome feedback and suggestions.

Here's the page where you can download an early and free CNC version of PhotoToMesh:

Free CNC version of Photo To Mesh

As I say, all suggestions enouragement/discouragement welcome.

[awerby]

Producing code for a CNC machine is not as simple as translating from one file format to another. For one thing, different machines interpret the same code differently, so generic G-code can not only fail to work, but can do unexpected things. If you're a "complete novice" in this, I'd suggest you pull that version from your website before someone gets seriously injured, and not put out a version that purports to support CNC machines until you know what you're doing.

[owenransen]

I'll mark it as experimental and not for novices. Currently all of my beta testers are still alive and unharmed.

[wyzarddoc]

Andrew you seem to have limited or no knowledge of the software since you did not look at the code generated in the program and recognize. It is just g-code for the picture object that was converted. Anyone who runs a CNC machine would look at the code then edit the code for their machine. There are not pre-run setup headers, no machine specific setup/calibration routines, no tool change routines etc. So please be so kind as to keep your suggestions of pulling a evolving program until you you have looked at it.

[wyzarddoc]

Awerby - Andrew I went to your website and see that Owen's software will be in competition with your website and product promotion.

[awerby]

Thanks for visiting my site, wyzarddoc, but it's hard to "compete" with a free program. I don't attempt that; I just try to put out good deals on hardware and software that I've used and found to work well. If you look in my Links section, you'll notice that I have links to lots of free software. But when someone who admits that they don't know what they're doing puts out a program that will be run on powerful automatic machinery, I thought a note of caution was advisable. What you don't know CAN hurt you.

Maybe it will work perfectly; as Owen points out, I didn't try it myself. But there's a lot of things that go into a CAM program; companies that are in this field spend a lot of time and effort getting them right. The lack of post-processors is just an example; there are other things as well, like collision avoidance and approaches to corners for example, that are not trivial and need to be worked out or fires can start, tools can break, and sharp pieces of metal can start flying around at high speeds. I'm glad nobody's been hurt yet, but that doesn't mean nobody will be, or that nobody's project or machine will be damaged. I doubt the makers of freeware would take any responsibility if that happened; it's up to us to be careful about what we use.

[owenransen]

It's up to us to be careful about what we use.

It certainly is!

PhotoToMesh is not freeware. The CNC part is because it is experimental.

I did not leap out of the womb fully formed, so I like to get advice from people further along the road. "A 1000 mile journey starts with the first step..." to use a cliche.