Hello all. I’ve been checking out the website since earlier this year and really wanting to dive in. I know I will run into a few major questions that there is no end to reading available for them but it’s about impossible to know when you’ve reached the ready point.
My intention:
Having a cnc router is going to be great in itself. I can see no end to the possibilities which is in itself, the the rub. My primary intention is to use it to aid me in building small electronics. Please don’t laugh, building guitar effect pedals. (Or laugh because there is much humor surrounding the topic) My idea is to is it for engraving control plates, engraving powder coated aluminum, and even engraving or milling control holes into aluminum boxes eventually. (Not scared to call the latter a project that may be for a much later date).
My understanding- such as it is: (and one question)
Smaller is better. Got it. I’d love to make it large enough to also mill a Jazzmaster body out of wood (21"x17" to give it elbow room) but, that may be a project for a later date. Having a little control over cutter speed may be desirable from what I understand. For my needs as I’ve stated so far, I’m wondering if the Makita device is going to have the advantages I want over the Dewalt?I realize there’s going to be a degree of trial and error here.
Software:
I’ll just say it. I’m hopelessly Mac. Currently I’m working with an M1 Mac mini on Ventura and I’ve been playing with FreeCAD which seems to have some output for Marlin… I understand running ESTLCAD is the thing here but… well, I tried fairly hard to Wine it and it gave me the butt. I do run a Raspberry Pi in my house that I’d like to leave on Homebridge duty but it could be devoted to the cause if necessary. I’d really like to avoid running an emulator or specific machine for Windows but, if it comes down to it, I would sigh and shoulder it. Whatchathink?
I appreciate your patience with my meandering first post. I am pretty excited to get going on an MPCNC Primo!
Welcome Wayne. As they used to say in the olden days, “I have a computer not a hobby, I have a Mac”.
(except in the olden days they said “Macintosh”. Kiri:Moto works for me thus far.
I find that an older Microsoft Surface Pro is a great garage computer. I gout a vinyl keyboard cover to keep the dust out, but it works great and you can find them at less than $250 for the older models.
Yeah, it hadn’t occurred to me that running an M1 Mac mini that Windows 10 is not going to work unless I run an emulator, not just a virtualizer. I’ve got one now but it’s super slow. Possibly too slow to work. It’s not up and running yet.
I’m not being tribal here, but having another OS just adds an entire layer of complexity that I don’t need to deal with. It takes away the focus of what I’m doing in a way.
I also figured that by the time I’d paid for an emulator, the OS and even EstCam’s modest fee, or alternatively a laptop or tablet, I could have a fairly healthy chunk of commercial software that worked in my preferred environment.
Kiri works for me, but I am really looking with interest to the (rumoured) Lightburn stuff.
I’d agree. I forgot about this for a while. Must have seen something shiny™. I’ll look into this Kiri then. I mean, if it works, it works. That’s why I use what I use. It just works.
Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager and Windows 10 don’t cost anything. It’s just the cost of ESTLCam. I’ve used this combination for several years with good results. I’ll agree that using an emulator is not ideal, but it has worked well.
Now that I’m using Lightburn on my Mac, I’m really looking forward to their CAM version. Hopefully they will release it in the near future.
I use Fusion 360 for design and recently learned the CAM can be useful if you install one of the post processors (even on the free version). It just had me update, so I’m not sure if that version is still dependent on Rosetta 2.
