ESTLCAM

I have used all sorts of CAM from the free stuff to Master CAM and lots of stuff in between.

After a while you get a sense for these things.

I looked at it and looked at a couple of the tutorials.

Each of the tutorials is less than 8 minutes

The clickable manual also has nice little videos.

It all looks pretty simple, but, that is from a person with tons of CAM background.

From this side of the fence, it seems like you would need some CAD - maybe sketchup to do the drawing stuff.

For simple operations it looks pretty good - - - for the money.

Low initial cost = not much to loose.

I bit of imagination and ingenuity and you may be able to do some pretty cool stuff with this.

I would not recommend it to a serious sign maker.



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OOPS - sorry - I was thinking GCODE - this is something that goes along with ADUINO sort of stuff. --- That stuff is not in my paygrade. I don't know anything about that stuff.
 
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Couple of questions, firstly do you already have a CNC machine, if you haven't then do you have a specific machine in mind ? The cam software you mention is for a specific type of motion control device & I don't think it will drive any CNC. Only those as Leo says that are Aduino driven.
If you don't already have a machine then what is it you would like to be able to do with it ?
 
For CNC, I'd probably stick with the V-Carve software for designing.

Lots of options for driving the cnc once you get the codes output.
 
I downloaded the app to try it out a bit tonight. I could probably learn a bit more from watching their tutorials to make a more apples to apples comparison. It looks like it would be a good program to generate 2d files and less complex machining for the price. Looks like it will generate files for other controller software, such as Mach3/4, so can see a lot of shops are probably using it.

While I don't spend a lot of time doing this type of work, I can tell you I've wasted a lot of material learning and making my share of mistakes. I still do, but not nearly as much since using vcarve. Just to show an example, below is the preview of out of that software. Again, not apples to apples, I haven't spent enough time to learn how to do all the operations I did in vcarve, but in the vcarve model, I can move the part around when done and actually see what it will turn out to be, I even made a mistake on one of the pockets, corrected it, regenerated the preview, and verified it was what I wanted to do.

preview1.jpg

vcarve preview
preview2.jpg

Yes, it is about 6 times the price of this software for just the desktop version ($350). You might trial the cut2d version of their software and see if it would do the operations you need to do. Nice thing about their software is they let you upgrade to the next level of product for the difference in price usually. I can promise you that you will save money on wasted materials, save time, and save a whole lot on frustration.
 
OK I am biased being a Vectric user so if it is down to money then there are free cad & cam programs available & cheaper paid for software. I did a lot of research before I bought any Cam software & at the time for me Vectric were way ahead of anyone else for my needs. Obviously these are going to be different for everyone but I was looking for cam software that was reasonably easy to learn with good tutorials & good customer support. As I was running a business & those things were very important to me & although there were cheaper options available Vectrics cut2D seemed to fit the bill best.
Being a signmaker working with cad cut Vinyl I already had vector based signmaking software which I knew I could use to create artwork for cutting so I thought cut2d would be all I would need. Within a few weeks of using the machine I had realised that there was a lot of other things that I could do with it & cut2d just wasn't enough, upgrading to vcarve pro was easy & as Darren has said you only pay the difference in the price of the software :)
As Darren has also said the previews are great, you can view the parts before you put any material on the machine which means you get a lot less wasted material, it is also handy when you are doing something like vcarving because you can experiment with different tools & then review the results all without having to put a piece of material on the machine :)
All of Vectrics software has a free downloadable trial version which you can do most things with, obviously there are limitations on what you can cut but there are a couple of files you can actually cut on your own machine. It's worth downloading the trial & having a look for yourself, might not suit you but you won't know till you try, :)
 
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