CAM Newbie Needs Advice

I have zero experience with cnc and am thinking about converting my little benchtop mill with stepper motors. The problem is that I don't want to give up manual control of my machine and invest in cam software before I'm sure I can work out all of the bugs. I'm looking for a CAM solution for a guy with a really low budget. I have tried a couple of trials of sprutcam and mastercam and found sprutcam to be more intuitive to a new user. I'm willing to try anything that I can get my hands on. I believe that a developer should be compensated for their work but these $10,000 and up price tags on CAM packages are Crazy to a guy like me. That being said I have no moral opposition to trying cracked versions of popular software for the purpose of learning. I'm not making any money with my machine or anything, just your low level hobbyist. What do you guys recommend for a guy like me? Can anyone point me toward some resources? I'm at a loss.

If you are looking for 2,5D I would recommend NC12 from FILOU it is a professional CAM software but it is verry intuitive and easy to learn. Best thing for you is that they offer a hobby version, with a low price but with no limitation.

Fusion 360 by Autodesk offers yearly licenses for free to those who are not using the software commercially. You just have to submit an application for the license. It's a bit of a new product, so not that mature yet, but hard to complain about free software. Otherwise, I suggest Bobcad as a more mature product that is budget friendly. Their list prices are high, but if you call them they usually are good at working with you in your budget, so could be worth a call. In my opinion, Bobcad is a more mature product than Fusion at this point and would be a little easier to get results from, so as it often does, it comes down to whether or not you are willing to pay for something that may be a little better right now or want to go with free where you will need to deal with a less finished product.

Whether you are morally opposed to using cracked software or not, it's still illegal and stealing no matter what your purpose is. Since there are products out there that meet your needs and your budget without needing to be used illegally, that makes the idea of using cracked software even all the worse in my opinion. Support the companies that want to serve your segment of the market instead of those who have no interest in your segment of the market.

You really seem to be of two minds about all this stuff. You want to have a CNC mill, but you want your mill to stay manual. You believe developers should be compensated for their work, but have "no moral opposition" to stealing it.

I'd like to help you out, but then again, I've got other things to do...

I started with a Novamill and no knowledge of CNC programming in 2011.
I use a free 2D drawing package called NanoCAD which is a Russian version of AutoCAD but free to non-commercial users.
I then use Gsimple, which is also free, to create the G-Code. I edit it using Notepad.

You can make quite complicated items with this setup (see image here: http://www.cnc-arena.com/en/forum/gs...ml#post1615379 #70 ) and it lets you wrestle in hand-to-hand combat with the G-Code, which gives you a good idea of what is going to happen and teaches you G-Code as you go.

Thankfully, my Novamill is on Mach3 and refuses to run and code that isn't typed correctly. ;-)