I need some input, and I hope I am asking in the right place.
I do a lot of contour cutting projects currently for vinyl however, this is my first dive into CNC, mainly because I need the ability to contour cut thicker items. My question is this: what software should I look into and are there any that support registration marks similarly to plotter software? I do not mind a manual where I have to verify marks, as I have to do that now with my current cutting plotter, but a huge help would be if there is one with automatic registration.
If you are cutting with a drag knife, what you can’t do is use Estlcam with the Jackpot. Estlcam does not generate toolpaths for a dragknife but does it on the fly with the controller, the Jackpot needs code that has the dragknife included. Hope that makes some kind of sense…
it doesn’t but i get the gist of don’t use that program lol
and I assume by jackpot you mean the board. I was considering using a skr board many as I am familiar with them as i have their products in all of my 3d printers
Eeeh, I use estlcam, jackpot and a drag knife and it works fine. My drag knife mount is spring loaded so setting the cut depth is pretty forgiving, YMMV.
Edit: unless you mean use estlcam as a sender - which it’s true you can’t, you have to create gcode files and then run the on the jackpot.
No, I mean that Estlcam does not calculate the offset of the drag knife into the toolpaths. You can notice that when cutting small letters etc. when using the Jackpot as the sender. When using Estlcam as the sender as well, it calculates the offsets on the fly. The Jackpot can’t do this but expects “finished” code (which Estlcam does not provide).
I’m confused too but I don’t understand what you are trying to do. When you say you want to contour cut thicker items, what do you mean? Are you still referring to vinyl? Are you talking about using a drag knife? Or are you talking about wood or plastic or some other material such that you’d be using a router instead? Or a laser? More details will help.
ok lol
thicker materials
Yes Wood, Cloraplast, thin aluminum. I currently do all this by hand, so I want to change to doing it on CNC. I hadn’t mentioned tooling yet as I’m mainly trying to learn software and find one that fits my needs
Ok, I think the mention of vinyl sent people down a drag knife path.
For CNC, you generally have CAD software for designs (same as 3D printing) and CAM software for converting those designs into tool paths (gcode files). CAM is the equivalent of slicers for 3D printing. Then there are different ways of sending those files depending on the controller.
For CAD software: Fusion and Onshape are popular. I’ve been using FreeCAD lately. If you’re just doing 2D designs, you might use a vector graphics program like Inkscape to create SVG files instead of CAD files.
For CAM software: Most use Estlcam because it’s one of the easier ones to use. Fusion CAM is also used by quite a few but that is quite a bit more complicated. There are other options like Kiro:Moto.
There’s a ton of other software out there. For 2D, you just need to get either a DXF file or an SVG to load into CAM. If you upload some pictures of things you’ve been doing by hand, we might have a better idea.
I’m not quite sure what you’re looking for in regard to registration marks. When you use the CAM software, you define the point that is the origin, then you move the cutting tool to that location to start the job.
There is a learning curve to all of this but it’s not bad getting started with the basics.
i’ll get some pics, but I’m referring to registration marks like you would put on printed vinyl for contour cutting and registration for cutting, as I will be printing directly on the substrate before cutting, so I kind of assume some method was needed along the tracking like you do with a cutting plotter
