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11

General Mach Discussion / HELP in Phoenix Arizona

« on: November 16, 2008, 11:32:07 AM »

Hello All,
I have just finished the physical construction of a 24" x 60" all leadscrew router with Xylotex steppers and drive box, and need help with the software setup. Is there anyone in the Phoenix area who knows a thing or two and can help me get my machine up and running? I can pay you for your time.
Thanks to all, Bob

12

General Mach Discussion / general newbie questions

« on: October 31, 2008, 01:11:55 PM »

Hello all,
I have just finished the physical construction of a 24" x 36" router table and am now getting to the software part. I am a cabinet maker by trade, and what I want to do with my cnc machine is the make shallow area routes of flat cabinet doors so that I can inlay veneers into the routed areas. I will make the inlays myself on a bandsaw, and they will be about 1/16th inch thick. The routed areas will be freeform, that is, I want to hand draw, for example, a bird in flight, transfer the drawing to the veneer, cut the veneer into the bird shape, use the cut veneer to make a line drawing of the outline of the veneer bird, take a picture of the line drawing with a digital camera, download the pic into my pc, use a scan-to-CAD system to change the line drawing from raster to vector, have it expressed as a DXF file...and this is as far as I go. (Do I get extra credit for run-on sentences?). I don't know what my next step should be, but I think I need to buy both a CAM software system such as MasterCam to translate the DXF file into Gcode, and a motor controller such as Mach3. Or maybe one of those systems will act as the scan-to-CADer? Do I need to combine the pc requirements (ram, cpu size, etc.) for both the CAM system and the motor control system to have a pc with the capabilities to run both? I have a whole bunch of dumb questions like that, but you get the idea -- I need advice, and would appreciate any help you can offer.
Thanx, bob