While on his YouTube page I found this! I found it to be enjoyable and fascinating to watch. See what you think. My CNC projects choice just got a whole lot wider. Gray
I purchased ESTLCam about 6 months ago. Christian has an extremely nice program. He updated from 7 to 8 recently and provided me with free upgrade. I use Rhino3D for CAD and export the designs to ESTL in DXF format. Works great and the trochoidal milling feature is awesome!
I keep saying to Mark that it's the best 50USD out there, and I'm sure it outperforms some of the 600USD ones. You even get to test it out before you "buy". I say "buy" as it's more a donation of 39€. ESTLCam is THE CAM I'll be using, and so are my friends and "customers! New version was released a few days back. -Ronald
I have been experimenting with a few CNC programs for while. So far DeskProto is pretty good but I have had a few glitches with it. Like not cutting all the way to the full depth of the material and making the same passes twice. Now I am experimenting with Estlcam. This $50 program is awesome. He is a genius, for the cost and the features you get and simplicity. I would never buy a $600 program. But obviously I probably would not need all the bells and whistles a $600 program would give. So for now I think I am settling on Estlcam for now.
I am a complete noob when it comes to CNC and work flow. Bought a SO2 and quickly found I needed more than Easel. Don't get me wrong it got me doing some jobs and kept me from breaking to many bits to start. But I stumbled on to Estlcam on the Inventables forums. Best 50 bucks I spent and Christian is super responsive and helpful. Now I use Sketchup and Estlcam. Next build is custom c-beam and hope to use Estlcam to control it as well. Cheers
I concur. Estlcam is a great little program, and comes at a great price. Let us know how you get on with it. I've only heard good things about it.
I am also extremely impressed with EstlCAM. I was happy to purchase it after a few hour's use, and I've barely scratched the surface of its capabilities at this point.
I watched a LOT of YouTube videos. Trochoidal milling? Milling threads? Amazing. I have used the helical drilling, that has worked very well. While I haven't tried thread milling or a trochoidal toolpath yet, I have I played a bit with the V-Carving feature in EstlCAM, it also works very well. Again, the issues I encountered were all mine, nothing to do with the CAM software or the C-Beam machine.
