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Software for CNC engraving on a mill

I've had a CNC mill for years but have been too busy to do anything with it (partly because of the steepness of the drafting learning curve); now I have a need to do some engraving so need to gather my courage. The Mill is a Denford Starmill. I've got a copy of Mach3 but very little knowledge and no experience. What software do people recommend for engraving? Free is always good, but I'd be prepared to spend some money if that means the learning curve is more shallow.

Reply to
no_spam
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Reply to
no_spam

No personal experience but have heard V carve mentioned quite a lot in amateur CNC circles

Reply to
Bob Minchin

I have used CamBam for simple text engraving. Free for upto 500 lines of Gode IIRC. Other fonts are available apart from those within CamBam. Whilst I have Vee type engraving cutters an ordinary centre drill works well. Good Luck Richard

Reply to
Richard

start with Inkscape (free, plus has a jillion fonts either installed or available, curved text, shapes, and so on - basically, it will do almost anything 2D), create some text using the text tool, and turn the text into a path using the object-to-path tool, found under the path menu header.

save as .svg, then turn that into g-code using cam.py (also free, but may only work on Linux boxen, I dunno) or a similar svg-to-gcode translator.

Inkscape is a gpl line drawing program like Illustrator, and it's nearly as good as Illustrator, unlike many gpl free programs which aren't nearly as good as their commercial competition. Highly recommended.

there is also a (free) gcodetools extension for Inkscape which will produce gcode directly, but I haven't used it.

-- Peter Fairbrother

Reply to
Peter Fairbrother

Thanks to all - FYI I went for VCarve. It's not cheap and there's a lot of learning to do but we earn to spend and we all need to keep the brain busy. Gulp!

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no_spam

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