Hey guys,
I’ve been trying to get the trial version of Mesh Cam working on my 3020, while my other machine is being moved into another cubicle at the Makerspace. Though the interface appears rather crude, I keep hearing good comments about it online. They give you a 15 day free trial with no limitations, and I think the program should be pretty handy, if I can get it to run. It really seems pretty simple, and it takes grayscale and bitmap images and turn them into 3D Mesh files. It REALLY works well on architecture, photos of individuals require good lighting and/or some doctoring of the mesh with the tools that are supplied, but it actually took a jpeg file of me and converted it to a mesh. It prefers a .png file or bitmap file for better resolution, but the resulting mesh has been coming out okay. Right now, I haven’t been able to cut a file because the post for the controller that I have on my 3020 is an unusual one that will have to be modified to run (not my area of expertise). But I’ve been communicating with support and I think the issue will be corrected soon. Online, I’ve seen a few comments where people on CNCZone use it. And, one guy said he uses it to mill out parts that he has modeled on Solid Works. I haven’t decided if I would choose this over V-carve, but there are some distinct advantages. Ideally, I would have the $$ to purchase Aspire, but that’s just not a viable option at this point.
I would suggest anyone who wants to do some 3D milling to give it a try for the 15 day trial period. It’s extremely easy to use, and because you get the full use of it for the 15 days, you can generate as many 3D models as you can and save the gcode. For me, I really like being able to get the 3D relief of architecture from photos or screenshots that I could use in woodworking.
Fredrick, I think you’d love it. Buying it, long term for the Pro version is $500, but at the very least, it’s a free and useful tool for 15 days. The website or the software GIU won’t impress anyone, but the capabilities seem to be there. It may be possible to do similar things with Cambam, but I don’t know, I haven’t tried it. One commenter suggested that cambam took longer to process the large mesh files, but for some, it might be a useful tool long term at $147.