[g450pilot]

Hello to the Forum! This place is great.

I'm just starting this hobby/business and have a lot to learn. I have been using a friends CarveWright machine, but see some reliability issues.

I also see some quality DIY machines, but need to know how to digitize an obect so that the router can work. And, how much they might cost.

It looks like I would like to us Mach 3 software, but looking for advice there too.

Regards,

Dave

[vinot]

It depends on kind of object and size.

There are several ways to digitalize:

-touch probe scan: acts as another tool in your router or milling, as accuracy as your router, maybe the most cheap option.
-laser scanner: should be another "machine", even like www.david-laserscanner.com, for me works 100%. Other commercial options should start at 3500usd (?, NextEngine perhaps) up to several kUSD
- scaner arms (Faro and so on), they act as a touch probe but with an arm, also an expensive option.
-photogrammetry, basically for very large objects (buildings, arquitecture...), costs depends on camera/s used, commercial apps are not so expensive (photomodeler works also fine for me)

In my opinion the most easy way is to use a touch scanning in your router: my CAM app accepts direct scans and revert it to the model, so it is a semiautomatic procedure. After this way, the rest could become more teddious and hard, but better results could be achived.

toni

[g450pilot]

Toni:

Thanks for your reply. It clears up a couple of question since I am new to this.

I think the touch probe will probably work best for me.

Regards,

Dave

[ger21]

There's a guy making inexpensive probes on the Mach3 forum.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/ind...ic,5004.0.html

[g450pilot]

I have the mach 3 site on my list, so I'll check.

Dave