Anyone here milling pcbs that uses a design software other than eagle? Would like to hear a bit more about how that workflow looks (export to gerber or other format? what cam software do you use from there to get gcode?)
I think someone else was talking about this recently, but I forget which group. I think +Peter van der Walt was in te conversation though. Open builds or open cnc or shapeoko communities maybe.
If Peter can point me in the right direction that would be great. All I’ve seen in this group is a few people that use FlatCAM but they’re still designing in eagle, they just need more features for 2 sided that we haven’t written yet.
+Peter van der Walt Hehe I know you are. Me too. I have access to Altium but the learning curve is so big that I haven’t even taken the time/ been able to figure out how to do anything more than open a file. It does awesome visualization though.
Anyways I was just trying to get an idea of how many people are using software besides eagle that may want to mill boards.
Thanks.
Heh. I now also think that it may have been 8-20 weeks since that discussion. Damn…my life is boring…
I think they say “Kicad is great until you try to use it”. They don’t say that? Oh well.
Yeah, I was trying to figure out if gerber import was worth working on. I know the eagle metadata is absolutely fantastic for us, but in theory gerbers are just vectors that can be loaded into a ThreeJS mesh and we can feed that to the existing toolpath generation code. Practically, it’s a very annoying job to have to do, but at least Mayhew Labs has a pretty cool “WebGerber” library that powers their browser gerber viewer. It uses ThreeJS too!
I’ve been soldering my 3d printer control boards using a soldering iron and solder wire on the 0805’s, and yes, tweezers. Honestly, it’s not as bad as the thru holes - headers annoy me more.
I don’t think your DXF project is that bad, definitely seems easier than my vision for STL import, slicing, and send to 3d printer all client side. Although that new Kiri.JS slicer would make things easier. Still working on deciphering the code whenever I have a few minutes.
If you want to hop on a call I can walk you through the eagle widget which is a great template for DXF because it inits it’s own 3d viewer and takes its own drag drop, and we can try integrating some of your code there. And also because it’s the code I know best Let me know if you want to do that. And yes, we will make a killer PnP platform.
Ah, SLAcer. I’ve seen that mentioned but didn’t know the name of the guy working on it till now. Not exactly the same thing since its layers for SLA not tool paths for FDM, but could still be helpful.
Yeah, sure thing. Hangouts on air is the way to go. Got my lighting fixed for webcam and everything. Can’t even begin to count how many CP widgets I’ve manually moved and updated but my github should have an accurate count. I know next to nothing about SPJS though.
And I could stand to learn a bit about 32 bit board design. I was thinking about making the next version of my printer control board using the atsam3x8e due chip on board, still having sockets for stepstick-style drivers, and of course my personal signature of rj45 for cabling and atx power connectors. The ultimachine ambit comes closest to this set of functionality.
http://upverter.com its simply amazing! I love it! I can not stand eagle. Its pricy for NON-OS projects but hey most of the stuff we do is OS so win win!
I prepared g-code files in FlatCAM, but the source were gerber files exported from Eagle. I think any software allowing export to gerber should work there. Drill file needs a trick using gerbv (gerber viewer) in order to be correctly displayed and processed by FlatCAM.
I used pcb-2-gcode Eagle add-on before starting using FlatCAM, but again all design files were sourced from Eagle.
Are you considering adding direct gerber import into Chilipeppr?
Hi. I do the design and simulations on Proteus Student Version (cannot adapt myself to EAGLE interface) . There export 3d object to Fusion 360 to fit the PCB the casing and match buttons and connectors.
Export PCB as Gerber and generate Gcode with FlatCAM. I’m not doing anything too complicated so I don’t really know if this process would be too limited for other more demanding projects
I never did PCB for ChilliPeppr, but doesn’t it use gerber files? I know it takes Eagle, but I though it took gerber too.
Wasn’t there something about Inkscape?
No, it’s always been built around the native xml data that an eagle .brd (native eagle board) consists of.
That’s what I was trying to figure out - if I should add gerber support. I don’t think it’s necessary because FlatCAM seems to be working for a bunch of you. Plus as discussed above we do lose a huge amount of the available board metadata that makes the eagle widget the amazing beast that it is by supporting gerbers.
Thanks for the thoughts everyone.
@Riley_Porter_ril3y upverter looks cool. Thanks for sharing. I presume you can locally download gerbers from it?
@NathanielStenzel Inkscape? Never heard it in this context. Any clarification about what you heard?
@raykholo 8-20 weeks back…sorry, I have no time to find it. Google it?
@NathanielStenzel so, Inkscape is a vector graphics editor like Illustrator. In theory, I could export a dxf of layer(s) of my board: ie a dxf of all the top traces and import that into Inkscape for manipulation of some sort or to make gcode from it. But I would send the dxf to my CAM software directly. Best I can think of.
I have seen that some people designed cool outlines in Inkscape and wanted to import them into eagle, while others wanted to design their boards directly in Inkscape. That’s kind of like me saying I want to design our next spacecraft using minecraft. Not a good idea.
@raykholo I believe there is some plugin for inkscape. I do not know the details. Just Google it.
You posting here makes us assume you are using ChilliPeppr. I know ChilliPeppr does pcb’s.