Hi, just reviving a question in an older thread.
I am building up a DIY CNC router which will be run from Mach III. I do not have ANY CAD programs or experience, and am not ready to take this part on right now. I do have experience with T square based drawings on paper.
I am also new to G code and trying to learn, but still - more or less just reading. Wow - sounds pretty lame when I spell it all out.
Anyway, a guy I know would like to take his 3D Rhino (cad ) drawings (true 3D shapes, not 2.5) and have me cut a few parts out. I told him that he should buy a copy of Mach III as well, import the CAD file to Mach III, and send the resulting G code to me to run on my cnc router. I assumed I can provide a copy of my tool configuration information to him, and his exported G code would work on my router.
Now that I am reading a bit more about it, I am thinking that this advice is not sufficient - perhaps wrong. After searching through the topics here and the mach support site, it seems that the steps are really more like:
a) Draw in Rhino CAD
b) Convert from CAD to CAM using Rhino CAM or similar
Yes and that similar would be Madcam! I am the US reseller for Madcam so you know what I'm going to suggest!
c) Post processor - no idea what that is ?
Built into Madcam and probably most other cam packages
d) Have him import into Mach III at his site
No need if you are going to run the part
e) Email the file to me for running
email the gcode created by the cam package
f) Run on my machine using Mach III
Bingo!
Is this right ?
yes
It seems like perhaps Meshcam is easier ? Can meshcam do both the CAD and CAM conversion ?
http://www.grzsoftware.com/ meshcam doesn't do the model
If I am properly following the discussion, Mach III can deal with generating a tool path for 2.5 D objects directly from a DXF files, but not generate a true 3 D tool path from a 3 D CAD file.
Mach3 only uses gcode that you supply and uses those gcodes to actually move the machine by putting signals to the motor drivers ......another discussion
The parts are not that complex, but it is possible / likely that the parts will need to be flipped over for cutting from both sides.
It is also likely that at least sometimes, the parts (foam) will need to be cut in sort of slices and assembled to achieve the desired thickness.
I tried searching and reading about this topic, but I am still unsure of exactly how to go from drawing to part.
Thanks for helping direct me.
HarryN