Hi,
I’m new to CNC, so having a hard time judging the software.
Can someone with some more experience than me, who’s used both Estlcam and Kiri:Moto, tell me why I should pick one over the other?
Is one more user friendly, is the other lacking some functionality, or does one do something better than the other?
I’ll be using this for both my full sized lowrider v3, as well as my just-arrived carvera air with 4th axis.
Thanks,
Bernard
PC or Mac?
Estlcam is by far the most supported here, but if you have a Mac it does require some form of emulation, which is the deal breaker for me.
Linux, so emulation for Estlcam, but I’m fine with that if it’s the “better” app.
I also have Makera CAM, but I’m guessing no one here will have any experience with that yet 
I had an old version of estlcam working under wine. I haven’t tried the newer versions. Kiri:moto is browser based and works on anything.
Kiri:moto is much more automated. You always give it and stl (not dxf) and then you play with the settings until it picks the routes you want. If it doesn’t do what you need, you can’t manually edit it. But if you get it working, it is very low effort to do new projects.
Estlcam is very powerful. You usually work with dxfs (which are line drawings, not 3D shapes). You select which edges to route and it can trace them. If the tracing fails, you can mamually click and snap to the edges. It can do stls. But it traces the whole shape. It is for 3D carving.
I use both. Kirimoto for 3D carving which is 90% of my projects. Estlcam for 2D cut-outs and engraving.
Ah, that’s useful information, thank you both!
Most of what I’ll do on the lowrider will be cutting out plywood from dxf files, so I’ll use estlcam for that then.
Sometimes I’ll do 3d carving as well. I want to make a dressform from foam insulation material by cutting a stl of my torso I had created by a 3d scan, in layers (using prusaslicer :D), carving that, and sticking the layers back together.
So for this I’ll need kiri:moto.
On the carvera it’ll probably be a mix of the two, depending on the complexity of the model. Simple 2.5d things I usually design in dxf through qcad, while more complex things (or things which are benefited from parameterization) I tend to design using solidpython2 via openscad to stl.
I’ll have to play a bit with makera CAM as well, and see how it compares to these two. If I’m not mistaken it can handle both dxf and stl files, and (from today) supports the 4th axis as well.
But I have no idea how good it’s path creation is, and how well you can manipulate it.
I’ve managed to get estlcam running on wine, but it behaves poorly on my computer, probably due to me using a tiling window manager (awesome wm), which plays havoc with the tooltips estlcam wants to show (at least that’s what I think is going on). But it seems to run fine on a Windows VM, so that’s good enough for me. I need Windows VMs for things like Garmin and Tomtom map updates, so I have that infrastructure set up anyway.
Thanks for the insights!
I use the current version of Estlcam with wine on Ubuntu. I have to hold shift for drop down menus to behave right. Other than that it works well.
Thank you David, I’ll give that a try tomorrow!
The shift key thing is something I don’t think I would have ever found on my own. I came across it mentioned in this post: EstlCAM 12 on Linux - #7 by soup.
He mentions that behavior might be specific to his laptop a Lenovo ideapad and I’m using Lenovo thinkpads so there’s a chance it’s a lenovo thing but worth a shot either way.
That does bring me to one reason I’m tempted to try out kiri:moto though. I have a dedicated shop laptop and I like the fact that onshape is cloud based so it doesn’t matter what computer I’m using. I like the idea of using the kiri:moto plugin for onshape for that reason, but l don’t like the fact it uses stl files for flat stock.
Nice work!
That sounds like a plan.
I may have not communicated well though. You can still cut out sheet parts (2.5D) in kiri:moto. You just need to pop the dxf into CAD and extrude it to thickness, then export as stl. Kiri is very good ad deciding what it should cut. As long as it does it right, it is very easy.
I still think you’re doing the right thing. But if you hit a frustration, give kiri:moto a try anyway. It is quick to learn and try.
Kiri will do that automatically, but you need to convert to svg though as dxf are proprietary files. Import the svg, then dial in the material thickness, and it all just works.
Works great, thanks!
I did not know that. Thank you.