I vote Estlcam With genuin Arduino Uno and 542 drivers, great bang for the $. Estlcam is its own firmware and easy to use CAM, can try for free and license is only $59 You will need to research, decide on your needs and choose the best fit for you. Cheers Gary
Hi Lexi, yes it will work with files made using F360... But, if you are committed to using F360 (an excellent option) then GRBL is sufficient. F360 has modeling to CAM under one program which is nice, then you would need to use a G-code sender such as Universal Gcode sender to send the commends to the GRBL Arduino. If you were to go with Mach3 then you would need a control board compatible with Mach 3 such as the MK3/4 board, there are many cheap Ebay (search "Mach 3 controller") options as well, but not sure of the quality. Cheers Gary
I love using Fusion 360 and Estlcam. Since most things I cut are 2.5 D, I do not usually bother modeling in 3D. I just do a quick drawing in F360 and export as a .dxf file and load it into Estlcam. It has streamlined my process.
ahh thanks guys this has really helped going to be making jewellery with my cnc cant wait to get it going
Depends what you're going to be running and how, but grbl is a great introduction to machine control. It's relatively simple, very cheap to start, has good support, and supports standards. Downsides are things like lack of probing, toolchanges or other canned cycles and macros (which are explicitly left for control software, grbl is purely intended as a motion control package), 3-axis-only (not often much of a downside) and some limitations on allowed g-codes. It's highly unlikely you'll run into any issues though, and if you do, there's plenty of support here and all over the web. It's what I'll be running my laser with here shortly, and it's going to be the initial controller for the mill until I eventually convert it to LinuxCNC (which is really overkill for any OpenBuilds-style CNC machine). I'm also a Fusion 360 user (and love it!) You'll probably need to check your post-processing on the Fusion side, since it's an industrial software it may be expecting abilities that grbl doesn't provide, but I suspect that post-processors for grbl are already available. Mach 3 is nice if you have a little more limited technical abilities and/or really just want to get to cutting chips as fast as possible, since it installs under Windows. You do pay for that convenience, of course. It's comfortable running anything from a simple router up to a full industrial machine and can do things like canned cycles and macros, wizards/conversational programming, all that good stuff. A while ago, it was pretty much the default for anyone wanting to get the most out of their machine, but these days grbl is good enough that it's really just another option. Your specific needs are really dependent on your specific machine, the type of objects you plan to be making, and your general technical abilities.
Hi Another opinion. If you’re going to use F360 to do your modeling then I also suggest using the built in CAM. It is very powerful! Especially considering the price of $0! Fusion has a bit of a learning curve but if you stick to the basics it should be ok. You can always grow with the software. I haven’t done much “artsy” stuff with F360. I only know that working with text isn’t all that fun. It can import svg files so you can design in other programs. Other than F360 I use grbl with the Protoneer Raspberry PI shield and bCNC as a gcode sender.
I have found that I can engrave any text with F-engave, a free software. Much easier than F 360 (IMHO). Sometimes a complex .svg with lots of arc segments would create a HUGE F360 file leading to my computer sometimes idling for extended periods while it was "thinking". I recently engraved something on a work piece. I designed the piece in Fusion 360, saved it as a .dxf, cut it, and before removing the piece from the machine, engraved a logo I made in F-engrave on it. It seems like a lot, but it was easier than my prior attempt with Fusion 360. F-engrave gives you the option to engrave bitmaps or dxf files. I just enter the height of my drawing and everything else is scaled. Then I just zero where I want it to go on my work piece. Hmmm... maybe I should make a quick video. I had plans to make some coasters for my sister-in-law out of artwork her 12 year-old son did. He is an amazing artist! He does a lot of pencil drawings which are easy to engrave.
yeah i used to use solidworks but switched over to fusion 360 had a little play with the cam inside f360 and seems pretty simple for my designs i still have a lot to learn with regards to cam but im continually watching youtube for inspiration and getting there i want to buy a mechanical cnc router kit and add the controllers etc myself so if anything goes wrong at least i know where to start when looking for possible faults etc
The BlackBox is grbl based controller. SketchUcam can create gcode compatible with grbl. The BB is not compatible with Mach3/4. You need a specific controller for mach.
I can't find an old mechatronics driver board for my old Phlat Printer 1 and Phlat printer 3. Im not a good learner when it comes to GRBL. I like things simple. Old school .
Works with Sketchup and SketchUcam, yes, Blackbox is a GRBL based controller. MAch3 is a WindowsPC based controller. They do not work together.
I don't like GRBL. I have no idea about this stuff. $ 13=0 report inches, boolean. All i want is to get my Phlat Printer 1 and Phlat Printer 3 working .Where can i get the old Mechatronics driver board from. Put an outside cut,inside cut,tabes, click on the green arrow and cut your part out . All i cut out is Dollar Tree foam board and depron foam .
Simple and old-school would be Mach 4 and an Ethernet Smoothstepper, I suspect, or something along those lines. You could probably go Mach 3 and a USB SmoothStepper since it's simple stuff. I would imagine that would be the closest to what you're used to, but it would still require configuration and setup similar to grbl (it may be more user-friendly though?). CNC isn't as easy as many people are led to believe, unfortunately. I doubt anyone makes dedicated custom hardware for this stuff any more with all the standardised options out there now, but @Mark Carew or @TrishC may know of people with specifically Phlatprinter-related hardware still lying around.
A couple of BlackBox's and OpenbuildsCONTROL will get your machines working just fine and is as simple as it gets (and cheep).
What if I told you you dont have to worry about what Boolean means etc (; OpenBuilds CONTROL simplifies all the configuring into plain english, with calculators for step size etc, even calibration Wizards etc
