hi guys
im currently looking to purchase an easy to use 2d or possibly 3d cad/cam package to work with my home made machine
the machine is surrently using the mach 3 software
i have absoloubtedly no cnc experiance at all and no cad/cam experiance
i have begun studying g code and m code in my spare time
but if anyone can offer any advice it would be most greatfully appreciated
what im hoping to achieve
one of my main hobbies is creating very high performance car audio systems for such things as speaker baffles and finishing trim ....at the moment im using a hand held router and getting good results but id like to go one step further and have a little help from the machine with more complicated patterns
thanks
nath
newbie alert
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Re: newbie alert
Our QuickCAM 2D has some easy to use, powerful features but it is not a full blown CAD / drawing package - more of a mixture somewhere between AutoCAD LT and CorelDraw. In the education market, easy CAD (drawing) systems seem a bit more daunting and usually need an additional piece of CAM (creating the toolpaths) software to get the G Codes out.
The beauty of QuickCAM is the inbuilt CAM which takes what you have drawn and lets you create all kinds of machining toolpaths (G Codes). It means you have all you need in one piece of software to knock up some designs and send the toolpath to the machine.
I don't know what style of G Code the MACH 3 software uses, but QuickCAM 2D has a configurable post which has a variety of different machines in there already and I'm sure one will work with MACH without any fuss - if it needs some tweaking to get the MACH files to load without any errors or complaints, then we'll be happy to make one for you. (It helps us that someone is testing the MACH post for us)
We continue to improve the software, adding new features based on customer feedback.
Let us have a photo of the kind of thing you want to make and I'll see if QuickCAM can reproduce it and create some toolpaths
The beauty of QuickCAM is the inbuilt CAM which takes what you have drawn and lets you create all kinds of machining toolpaths (G Codes). It means you have all you need in one piece of software to knock up some designs and send the toolpath to the machine.
I don't know what style of G Code the MACH 3 software uses, but QuickCAM 2D has a configurable post which has a variety of different machines in there already and I'm sure one will work with MACH without any fuss - if it needs some tweaking to get the MACH files to load without any errors or complaints, then we'll be happy to make one for you. (It helps us that someone is testing the MACH post for us)
We continue to improve the software, adding new features based on customer feedback.
Let us have a photo of the kind of thing you want to make and I'll see if QuickCAM can reproduce it and create some toolpaths