My LR3 should (fingers crossed) be built by the weekend, woohooo!!
So, that leaves me thinking about what software i’m going to need to learn to be able to use it!
i’ve used tinkercad, fusion 360 and repetierhost with Cura slicer for my 3D Printer, but… to be honest, i don’t know anything about software for CNC (design or carving)
Not sure yet if it matters or limits the software i can use, but I use the stock v1 engineering Marlin build on an SKR v1.2 Pro.
any recommendations, or links to further reading would be appreciated - ta
Same here been 3d printing for several years. My son is starting his 2nd year of engineering classes in high school and having the ability of a home CNC machine will give him more knowledge and hands on experience. he will be starting a CNC class at our local vo-tech school when he graduates in 2024.
I use Fusion 360 for design and CAM for my MPCNC. The most popular (and probably user friendly while still having a decent number of features) solution is EstlCAM. My guess is that over 90% of the MPCNC users on this forum use one of these two tools. There are a few other nice design tools for CNC work, but they tend to be $$$ and the CAM solutions might be more of a struggle.
Similar to 3D printing, there are three aspects to the job, 1) design, 2) generate g-code and 3) deliver the g-code. Generating the g-code for CNC use is referred to as CAM and is analogous to what Cura Slicer does for 3-D printing. CAM is often split into two parts, general CAM and a postprocessor that generates specific g-code for a specific firmware (Marlin in your instance). The graphic in the first post in this topic will give you a map of your choices, and the Software Workflow page may also be helpful.
In my opinion, Fusion 360 is a more feature rich and flexible solution, but has a significantly steeper learning curve. If you use Fusion 360 as a solution, the FlyFisher postprocessor is needed and can be found on links in this topic.
As for delivering the g-code, RepetierHost and SD cards cover a majority of the forum users, though wireless solutions like V1pi are also popular.
I agree with Robert. Take a read of the software workflow page.
You can download some designs to practice with, get DXF or SVG files.
For CAM, 100% start with estlcam. Everything you learn there will transfer over to any other program, and to the best of my knowledge all the rest are considerably steeper learning curves. So only leave estlcam if you find a limitation (hint I still have not left). If you do try something else, you go in with a solid foundation to build on.
I agree with all that @robertbu and @vicious1 said, and wanted to add my recommendation of ESTLcam. At first I used Easel, which is a “freemium” offering from (I think) the makers of shapeoko CNC machines. It has a paid Pro version but I was using the free tier. It is very user friendly (had an extremely low learning curve) but trade off was some frustrating limitations (perhaps intentionally to nudge toward Pro) but when I switched to ESTLcam, I liked it much better, pretty much immediately. It offers a free trial but when you go to buy its price is very reasonable.
Hi all, just wanted to say thank you to each of you that replied. It will take me a while to read up on the recommendations & links you’ve all very kindly given (and learn), but i do appreciate all of the responses.