Routing Wood

[Tweakie.CNC]

Obviously I would need to make a lot of these to justify the cost of the software but this only took minutes from drawing it on the screen to having it ready for a coat of satin varnish using Vetric's VCarve Pro.
It was cut in Teak in three passes and there is visibly a slight variation in toolpath which is probably due to the backlash in my Z axis but it is a free gift to one of my neighbours who thinks it will do just fine. 

Tweakie.

[RICH]

make a lot of these to justify the cost of the software

Tweakie,
Couldn't Cam Bam do that easily also?

RICH

[Tweakie.CNC]

Hi Rich,

Perhaps it can, I am not really sure.

I used to use CamBam (the free version) and that did not support automatic V Carving from TTFonts whereas with VCarve Pro it is only a couple of clicks and the toolpath is complete and pasted to Mach - no need to consider multi pass as this is taken care of automatically from the tool selection.

Perhaps I am biased because it took me a long while to save up for this software but, compared to CamBam, it is just so easy to use it is untrue.

Tweakie.

[RICH]

Tweakie,
I guess it comes down to what each software was created to do. Idealy one would like the software that "does it all" since we explore doing different machining tasks
over time. Along with the do all software comes the price tag. Very difficult to justify. You just can't win. I am playing around with CamBam....still have 10 trials left.

Gad you found the tool to make your work easy,

RICH

[Tweakie.CNC]

I guess it comes down to what each software was created to do. Idealy one would like the software that "does it all" since we explore doing different machining tasks
over time. Along with the do all software comes the price tag. Very difficult to justify. You just can't win. I am playing around with CamBam....still have 10 trials left.

So true.   

Tweakie.

[Tweakie.CNC]

Thanks to Zasti for the ‘heads-up’ on this one http://hobbycncart.com/forum/30-35-6808-16-1332785979 - a new, free, engraving program which supports ‘V Carving’ http://home.comcast.net/~sskroch/Fengrave/fengrave.html

The program works just fine with WinXP and the GCode produced is excellent using Mach3.
This is just a test sample, to try it out, which, I think, shows that it can produce results to match the commercial VCarve programs.

Tweakie.

[RICH]

Thanks for the link Tweakie. Seems like a nice freebee.
RICH

[Overloaded]

NICE find Tweakie, thanks !
Russ

[Tweakie.CNC]

My pleasure Rich & Russ.

Incidentally it supports all the single line stick fonts as well as the Windows .ttf fonts (they have to be copied to the F - Engrave fonts folder).

Tweakie.

[Overloaded]

 ,
Russ