Good morning everyone ;-)

I am considering buying a CNC router and from reading here in the forums it seems that I will need a 3D file (.stl) to CAM (Mach3) translator. Some years ago - 2011/2013 - some of you suggested freemill or aspire4, however, as it is now 2018 I wonder if there may be never - and maybe better - softwares available today?

I am looking for a solution that preferably is as intuitive to use as MoI3D - and as great to use as Moi3D ;-)

Thanks for any help in this - have a good day ...

Jesper

Hi Jesper,

I use Estlcam in combination with MoI, it works flawlessly! it is cheap, and has a straightforward interface, almost like MoI. The interface could be improved a bit, I am in contact with the developer about that. it is a (german) one man organisation, Estlcam. very clear, straightforward video tuts in english.
I generate dxf files for 2D (most of my work) and .stl files for 2.5D from MoI.
www.estlcam.com
you can download the software for free to test it, the waiting time to generate G-code increases a few seconds after every use, so after a while it takes some time before one can proceed.

I use a BZT cnc router with dedicated control software, but I could use any other software for that.

if you want a more thorough explanation, you can email me: vimito at scarlet dot be

Hello Evalon,

from time to time I use HeeksCNC - it can Import step-files.

Have a nice day
Karsten

Hi wimverbe & Karsten,

- & thank you both for your feedback and suggestions.

What actually matters most to me is that the software is intuitive & straightforward to use, as well as is reliable so that I don't get error codes ... At least at this point in time I have no experience with how I can correct such errors (and unfortunately I can't program) ...

I will take a look at HeeksCNC, estlcam & freemill and see if one of them "complies" with the way my intuition works.

Thank you also wimverbe for the offer to contact you should I need further explanation about estlcam ;-) I shall be pleased to contact you should it be feasible at some point in time ...

And just in case another Moi'er is thinking that they are using a very intuitive and not too costly MOI3D -> MACH3 "translator" program then I'd appreciate hearing about it to get a small selection to choose from.

Cheers to all ;-)

Jesper

I would recommend LinuxCNC with a MESA board(http://www.mesanet.com/). It's a little harder to get running than Mach3, but I haven't looked back since moving my router over to LCNC. The people at MESA provide excellent setup support and once you've set up a LinuxCNC machine once you can do the next one in ~15-20 minutes.

I use MoI with laser cutters, routers, CNC mills, 3D printers. I actually picked it up because Rhino was (at the time) very bad at outputting for 3D printing. MoI is such a joy to use that I worked it into my pipeline as the first step :)

Hi All,

Just a brief update to say that I have decided to go with Estlcam in the first round. Looks very versatile and accessible and also at a very reasonable price. And, as it is, I actually have an Arduino Uno already so getting started hopefully is not that difficult. And so many tutorial videos on youtube ;-) Thanks again to Wimverbe for suggesting this ...

Cheers,

Jesper

Take a look at ECam http://www.e-cam.it/#features

I use CamBam as well, but its Lathe functions aren't as good. ECam automatically updates as changes are made to the job and also generates a usefull model of the stock. I like ECam a lot.


Martin.

Fusion 360 is a powerful program and features a CAM section that is quite robust. You can use it free if you're a startup or doing this for a hobby. If your using it for business and make less than six figures annually you can also use the program free. Also use Estlcam - while it is very easy to use and inexpensive it is also limited. Really depends on what you want to mill. Also have CamBam but find it inadequate for 3D procedures like guitar necks. I highly recommend MoI for modeling, then Fusion 360 for the CAM - here is the link: https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/fusion-360-for-hobbyists

sure... ;)
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5994.1

Hi all,

Well, didn't see the last two replies but thank you also for suggesting ;-)

As it is I have bought EstlCam and it looks reasonably straightforward for simple 3D structures (which is what I mainly need to mill), however, I have used most of the day today on trying to convert a very simple drawing in Moi3D (FYI attached) to something that I can import as a 2D file into Estlcam so as to make milling easier - 2D. The file quite simply are for holes in the CNC's spoilboard so that I can actually mill something ... And either Estlcam comes up with an error message like "empty file" or corrupted file ... or, if I try to convert an .ai file exported from MOI to DXF or SVG either it doesn't work or the drawing becomes HUGE (like many, many meters on each side), or there are no holes in it when it is imported in EstlCam (??). So I am actually - and unusually with MOI - pretty frustrated now as I don't seem to find a simple way to export 2D files into a format that Estlcam can handle.

So by posting here I hope one of you know how this can be done - it would be appreciated ;-)

Cheers & thanks,

Jesper

A P.S. ... feel like adding that it likely is not an MOI "challenge" .. but sometimes it would be feasible to have an extended MOI conversion range like e.g. DXF or SVG. ... Thinking aloud here and - as always - with the cautious reservation that I may have overlooked something ...

... Cheers ...

Jesper

Hi Jesper,

I opened your moi file and what I can say now is that you better use real 2D, that means only use edges and not faces.

make sure that the unit system is set to mm or cm in the MoI options dialog, otherwise the G code generator will not be able to determine the size.



I selected the top face of your spoil board, copied it, then deleted the whole and pasted just the top face. then I selected just the edges from the face, copied it, deleted the whole and pasted just the edges. then I joined the whole, to make sure to have continuous lines.

this gives a 2D drawing which can be exported like this:



this yields a 2D dxf file which I trust to open without problems in Estlcam, I made an identical file for my machine last year.

Hi Wimverbe,

First - thank you very much for your prompt reply! ... I appreciate this ;-)

And then - seeing the screendumps in your post I looked a bit more into this this morning and found out that the reason why I can't export DXF from within MoI is because I am using V2. Apparently DXF export was added to MoI in V3. And for some reason the other solutions I tried for converting the file to DXF (online internet conversion & other CAD programs) didn't work at least from a quick glance ...

This is to say that since I have for a long time now been considering upgrading to V3 I decided that this was the time to do so. Thus I have now bought an upgrade and with inspiration from your guidance it took less than five minutes to make the DXF export and correctly import it into Estlcam. Quite a relief ..

So Wimverbe - thanks again for your help & wishing you a pleasant day ;-)

Jesper

glad it works for you Yesper!
happy milling!

wim

Upgrading good! You are good to go....

For anybody else, michael wrote a helper program for those older versions... it's towards the bottom of the resources page.

3dm curves to dxf....