A few weeks ago I joined the club of Shapeoko owners too :-) Got

General CNC CNC Routers
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1

A few weeks ago I joined the club of Shapeoko owners too :slight_smile:
Got mine from myhobby-cnc here in Germany. I started with some plotting using a pencil.
It took me a while to find the right cnc tools to generate the toolpath.
Most cnc tools (CAM) require Windows but I only have a Linux pc in my workshop. Pycam worked but crashed when reading a SVG file. I ended up using FlatCAM for Linux (meant for PCB milling) to do the plotting. Can anybody recommend a good toolpath generator for Linux ?

My plan is to develop a CNC edition of #GCodeSimulator and gcodeprintr. I was surprised how different the cnc controls and gcodes are compared to 3D printers. I made several fixes to the code to be able to parse cnc gcodes.

First I need to start cutting something, where is a good place to find some examples ?

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2

I’d recommend you to start with #Estlcam you can use it for free while you figure out whether it works for you or not. It is a nice Windows-only software.

For drawings you can just use gcodetools from Inkscape.

3

Inkscape, FreeCAD, Chilipeppr (I only recommend this if you have stock firmware for the arduino) might work. Inkscape and FreeCAD have a bit of a learning curve. Their is a G+ community for FreeCAD. There might be one for Inkscape.
I have software of my own that might be interesting but frankly is not production ready and makes big files. The paths are not efficient enough either.

4

On Linux, heekscad/cam and cncjs are worth checking

5

For Freecad make you use daily builds if you want to use the Path module

6

I have a smoothieboard controller so I’m not sure it it is too much different, but I recommend the following:

2D: http://Easel.com OR inkscape with gcodetools (built into the plugins now I believe) or makercam and I use pronterface to send the gcode to my machine

3D: Autodesk Fusion 360 which is free to use (even commercially as long as you make<$100k/year using it) and intuitive to learn (especially with youtube vids) and does 3D design as well as CAM stuff, then again I use pronterface to send the gcode to my machine.

7

Use freecad make sure its 0.17 it has a dedicated pathing workbench for creating your tool pathing takes a bit to figure it out, but its quite powerful. Its what i use with my router on linux

8

I use CamBam on Linux. It is no free, but it costs not much. It uses mono.

9

I tried Easel and I like it. Its good for quick & simple projects.
Unfortunately it does not support importing a STL file.
Next I will test with Freecad to see if it can do better with complex designs.

10

My command line software supports STL files for what it is worth. PyCAM does too. I think Chilipeppr and Laserweb do.