yayyyyyyy!!!!!!!

while checking things out, i stumbled across a program called meshcam. after reading the propaganda, i decided to give the 15 day trial a go. happy day! it seems to work and play well with my sketchup designs, works out ok on the cnc simulator that i have on the laptop, and today started the real test, running it on the cnc itself. so far so good, taking a bit more time than i expected, but that can be tweaked here and there. i'll post pics of the test items as they are finished. no real wood is being harmed, only some odd mdf scraps that are laying about.

Sounds good, Dan! MeshCam is one of the products shown on Inventables' software page when I was looking at buying my CNC kit. I've had it in the back of my mind all along but haven't needed that capability so far. I'll definitely give it a try one of these days, based on your experience!

Sounds great Dan, Glad you are finding yer way and getting things figured out

Awesome, would like to hear your review of it once you get more familiar with it.

would have gotten a couple more hours of experience with it today, but my wife and my body (after a rough night at work last night on short sleep) conspired to make the rest of me sleep all day today. oh well, there is tomorrow....

With the pitter patter of rain on the roof, and the cnc machine going strong, today is off to a good start. Figured out a new way to do the car cribbage boards last night, and ran it through meshcam today,and it looks like it'll work. Rather than hog out the waste around the car, I'll engrave a slightly larger version of the detail work, and do the name and drill the holes.

That's awesome Dan, good to hear you're making some progress on it. I might get back to mine soon, but house projects seem to be taking priority lately.

rats! doing so good today, and then at the last check on it, saw that the z axis was having problems. stopping as though stuck, and making odd sounds. sending a video of it with an email to the inventables gang to see what they think.

after a day's worth of fussing and fighting with the machine, accomplished a few things. found out that it was that nut under the bearing that was causing the problems with the z axis. once i got it tightened up again, all was well, for a while, then it started working its way back down again. nothing a little lock-tite cannot handle. then it was on to the photovcarve test. used a pic of my shop assistant, darth shmibbly, for the test subject. not sure why, and i will be sending an email to them asking why, but it took a roughly 6x6 picture and shrunk it down to a finished engraving of roughly 3/4 inch square. oh well, on to the next test. i decided to try a small gear, 9 teeth, about 5" in diameter. for some reason, and once again, i'll be asking why, it took its dear sweet time cutting it (roughly 3.5 hours). i had it set to machine around the perimeter and such, but the toolpath it took, had it wandering all over you know where's half acre, instead of just running around the perimeter (like bill's bracket. did up one of those too, to make sure i wasn't going any goofier than usual). oh well, going to work on the clock for the fair tomorrow, just so i can feel somewhat productive.

That's Awesome - Gears are sooo cool

Dan - I am sure you will find you way through the scaling error

Cool stuff man

Dan, did you check to be sure the gcode was setting the right scale on your 6x6 item? G20 sets the scale to inches, G21 sets to millimeters. If your drawing is 6" and the cnc is set to mm, it will cut "6" as mm which would be about 1/4".

Your gear looks pretty good! What material did you use?

bill - i checked all versions, and there wasn't a g20 or g21 to be found. as for the gear, it is just plain old half inch mdf.

got a reply today from rob at meshcam. downloaded v6, and read a tutorial over again, and the generated nc files work just fine on the sim. i also downloaded the 1.0.8 version of the universal g code sender as well.

Dan Noren said:

bill - i checked all versions, and there wasn't a g20 or g21 to be found. ...

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That can be a problem, as I have found out. Example: One runs a job defined in mm. Arduino/driver stays powered up. Next job was laid out in inches, but its gcode has no scale definition to change from mm to inches. System retains last scale command, so the "inches" job gets run in "mm".

I've had both directions happen to me; i.e., machine was still in mm mode when I ran a job built in inches; another time, machine was in inch mode when I started a job built in mm, which means reaching for the E-stop very quickly!

bill, i've added a g20 to a new test version of the g code, hope it works, should get email from the vectric people soon. i had a 96% successful test today. i have done up a burro viejo woodworking sign as a test. ran it today as it was too hot to mess with anything else. it carved the outsides of the letters ok, and it carved the insides of the letters ok, but did not clean up the insides at all. the letters in the test were recessed an even 1/8 inch. going to check to see if i may have missed something along the line (wouldn't bet against it).

I downloaded MeshCAM just to have a look see.

I am pretty good at this stuff and usually can determine how good something is or at least see the potential in a pretty short time frame.

The lowest price is $250 - with a cut viewer it is $400.

The lowest priced Vectric Cut 2D desktop is hundreds of times MORE user friendly, has WAY more functionality and has toolpath viewer built in plus has a TREMENDOUS support structure with FANTASTIC tutorials for a starter price of $150.

Meshcam should be $29.95 as it DOES have "SOME" functionality to it.

BUT - MeshCAM - really does not have much functionality at all.

In Vectric - you can even draw the vectors - not so in meshcam.

For $350 in Vectric you can get V-Carve Pro Desktop version and WOW - that is really POWERFUL, and really easy to use.

Of course there is a learning curve, but Vectric is light years better than meshcam.

i have the 2d trial edition on the laptop. i'll have to give it a closer look.

Dan Noren said:

bill, i've added a g20 to a new test version of the g code, hope it works, should get email from the vectric people soon. i had a 96% successful test today. i have done up a burro viejo woodworking sign as a test. ran it today as it was too hot to mess with anything else. it carved the outsides of the letters ok, and it carved the insides of the letters ok, but did not clean up the insides at all. the letters in the test were recessed an even 1/8 inch. going to check to see if i may have missed something along the line (wouldn't bet against it).

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Test...test...test..........

That's the name of the game. I've made a lot of messes trying one thing or another. So far, I'm doing what I want with the free software I've mentioned before, but I'm starting to consider other options as well.

Dan Noren said:

i have the 2d trial edition on the laptop. i'll have to give it a closer look.

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Dan,

There will be a little more learning curve with it - but there is a lot more functionality to it.

I have the Cut 2D desktop trial on my computer - I can walk you through a couple of functions if you want.

We can do a phone walk through if you want - we would just need to set up a time.

Dan Noren

Dan,

It took me about 15 minutes to create this in Cut2D Desktop - including downloading and installing.

100% Cut2D - nothing imported - no DXF imports

I did the toolpath preview - this is what you see.

The picture is also from the trial version of Cut 2D Desktop

Remember - this is what you can do --- $150. MeshCAM cannot come close to this