Alternate to Estle Cam? what would you use? or do?

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
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So far, its been pretty good for everything I have tried to do.

Though, today, I am trying to carve based on a friends Company logo as a “next step” I am finding there isnt much in the way of how to guides in Youtube for help on how to do thing.

he has a lot of Elaborate lines, that are captured in the design that I am bringing in, but I am getting lost in how to make some pockets, how to ignore some, and how to clean up others.

so, I went to you tube for how toos, but wasnt satisfied with the diversity of help.

so I am curious, what are other people using , when they arent using Estle Cam?

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I understand you are looking for another package since I really don’t use anything else, fusion is much more difficult, maybe I can help get you past this sticking point. If you want to upload some screen shots or something I can probably point you in the right direction to get this project moving.

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I really dig fusion though it took quite a bit of time watching YouTube videos on it

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i am in the middle of moving some hardware around the office, and troubleshooting some PI problems, I will post the files up by end of day

I hope :slight_smile:

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So with luck, I will try to explain what I am doing,

first of all, this is a For Fun project, so no timeline , money or dates are defined.

its something I took on as a learning project, as I believed it introduced me to a few new thigns I havent tried yet.

1 - I have attached the files I am using if only to show you whats going on if I didnt explain it right.

2 - The work piece I am working with is 20 x 20 cm, because thats why I have to work on :slight_smile:

3 - I have placed the DXF in the middle of the work area 200mm by 200mm, and defined a grid of 10x10

4 - using a 1/16 bit (1.49mm)

5 - so first of all, I am not sure if I should be using a PART, HOLE, Engraving, Carve.

I chose Engraving as it seemed to be the logical choice.

So for the ACTUAL Question.

If I look at Picture 1, and picture 2. I am highlighting the P, but the lines on Eitherr side of it, not the one down the middle.

picture_1
picture_11139×1163 101 KB

*
picture_2
picture_21118×1295 109 KB

I could engrave the inside of one, and the outside of the other, but I am looking for a way to make that “area” a pocket.

I want to start off by saying, yes , there is probably a better, smarter way. however, this is what the drawing programs have given me to work with. and I am looking to Get there through 1 set of software"

To explain how I got here.

  • Started with a PDF

  • Opened it up on my desktop and Screen Captured it.

  • Imported it into Inkscape

  • In inkscape “trace bitmap”

  • In inkscape “Object to path”

  • In inkscape “export to DXF”

  • imported it into Elscam

  • created all of the pockets options.

  • in Elscam, I exported it too CNC program

and ran it though.

finished
finished1016×1920 86.3 KB

pierre.zip (699.9 KB)

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What you are asking is the purpose of the carve option, assuming you have a V bit, which it looks like you do.

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I do have a V bit, but I havent used it yet, honestly its too big (i think)

my current dilema is that I want to select the path between the 2 green lines, not each of them.

please understand I I am as Junior as it gets, so excuse me if I am not using the right language, or not explaining myself properly.

"I seem to be able to Select the green line from Either of the pictures, but not highlight the middle of it, which is what I am thinking I want “cut”

not sure what is the right choice of “Cut” to achieve that, (carve , engrave, pocket, part …)

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Using Carve, Vbits are fine even if they are big, it will do the depth itself to fill the void. Super cool and pretty easy to see what is going on. You select a line and it asks what side of it you want to remove, it will automatically pick up the other line…but you still need to select them all one at a time.

Set a depth of no more than like 4mm, at first, to give it a shot.

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You also can also make the inside a “part” and the outside a “hole” and then choose island on the outside dialog. That will make a toolpath that will consist of anywhere your 1/16" bit will fit.

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Thanks.

I will be giving it a try, right now everything is a bit of a mess. I am installing Cable guides,

if I can say my #1 mistake I have made in everything, was trying to do 48 x 48.

if I would have done 44 x 44, everything would be so much easier.

My table I made, was 1 sheet of 4x8 3/4 plywood, cut and glued.

so my CnC basically sits on the Edge of verything, no extra place for cables, no extra place for fine tuning.

an extra inch or 2 on all 4 corners would have been the smart thing.

but noooo , I want to do it the hard way :slight_smile:

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I made mine 48x48 as well, and am running into many of the same mistakes. The top of my table is not secured whatsoever - it’s (2) 2.5’x5’ MDF boards butted up with each other, and the legs of the table are made to create a lip to secure everything in place; trust me - they aren’t budging whatsoever.

But, because my tabletop was not designed to be replaceable, I had to create a separate spoilboard, that is bolted to the top of the table, that I added T-Nuts to for future clamping.

20190926_200701-1
20190926_200701-1.jpg2078×2247 738 KB
20191024_183021
20191024_183021.jpg4160×2080 2.22 MB

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To answer your original question. I have tried out several other CAM software packages for many reasons. I keep coming back to Estlcam. It was cheap and it has a very simple interface. It is also way more powerful than I originally thought. Every time (almost) I think, “oh estlcam can’t do what I want” I am wrong. Some things take a bit of fumbling around to figure out but when you do figure it out you will have a “Well Duh! That was easy” moment.

A few tips for esltcam that might help.
Save the project as a CNC program and watch the preview. It will help you make sure you get it to do what you want. When you are viewing the preview you can change the view. You can angle the camera to show a 3D view.

Last tip for now is how to create a pocket with an island. Even with the tool tip this took me a bit of time to figure out. For this example lets say you wanted to pocket the letter P in your demo piece. You want to pocket the letter but leave the inside of the P as an island follow these exact steps.

  1. Select the tool you want from your tool list
  2. Click Part button top left
  3. Click the inner line of the letter P (the small one that will become the island)
  4. Select Hole Button on the left side
  5. Click the outer line of the letter P
  6. Click Pocket In the Properties window that appears on the right side
  7. Click Island
  8. Rejoice!!!

Hope that helps. If you have any other questions on how to use esltcam these guys on this forum are amazing.

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13

If I am willing to pay a bit more, what is the standard “prosumer” choice. Can one use any of the Vetric products as complete replacement?

Allow me to elaborate.

I am very new all of this and have been only using EstlCAM to date. Don’t get me wrong, I think its amazing for the price and predict I will end up just using it. Because I am doing simple work thus far, my minor disappointments with EstlCAM are generally with the user interface and hence working efficiently with the tool, not functionality or doing tricky cuts. For example (and I stand to be corrected on all of these):

  1. The lack of an UNDO feature (this is the big one, the ones that follow are minor).

  2. Seemingly strange field navigation behavior. Normally, when you hit TAB in applications you traverse the fields of an application. I am not sure EstlCAM navigates properaly in this regard all the time, however more importantly (IMHO) as you TAB between fields it generates the windows sound/tone that is normally associated with an error or a problem. This is confusing and distracting.

  3. The strange use of Modal windows or lack thereof. There are some dialogs that popup in EstlCAM that popup and remain “Modal”. This is correct behavior. However, when you ALT-TAB to other applications, the EstlCAM “Modal” Window often remains. I suggest incorrect behavior.

I guess my point is EstlCAM is great, but a little tricky/touchy/strange on the user interface side.

P.S. Again, I have not tried it, but based on the comments I have seen I don’t think F360 is a choice because too much work to learn and use.

P.S.S. At some point I will download a trial of a Ventric product but have not had time yet to do that.

Thanks as always.

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Vectric is $350 for a very limited package and $2000 for the full. Very significant difference. I have checked with them and the cheap packages people are buying are indeed pirated and not legit as advertised. I can not support that in any way.

1-Click select, select the path you messed up and hit delete. He has addressed this and it takes a significant amount of memory to pull off. As for a bad setting just click and change it. I hear this a lot and am not sure what people want to undo.

I think you will find all CAM packages are not very standard. I would assume the devs are more focused on function than form. Maybe Christain can change some of this, not really sure. I do know before I found Estlcam there other options where far far far less standard and all ran in some sort of window iframe sort of thing. We have more options now but I bet you will find Estlcam’s window quirks very minor compared to all others.

Fusion is fine but you really have to understand every aspect of CAM to set it correctly. Watch a few of the NYCCNC vids and you will see the plethora of settings it takes to get right. Watch all the little check boxes that get casually checked and unchecked. I am semi fluent in CAM and have an extremely difficult time getting Fusion CAM to do what I want in any reasonable amount of time.

All that said, if you find something good with a price point that is in line with our machines and user base I am all ears.

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I will be honest. I did not research pricing before posting. My apologies. I had assumed that a full version of anything would be about $350 (not $2000). $350 might be fair, but I wont invest $2000 for undo :wink:

Of course, not interested in pirating anything!

I think that is a super fair question. Here is my take. In the scheme of things this in minor, only for the sake of discussion/explanation do I ramble :slight_smile:

So personally, I have come to expect that every piece of software has an undo feature. More specifically (CTRL-Z) but that is just a keyboard mapping of course. Hence if I do “anything” in say my word processor, or spreadsheet, tinkercad, etc. and don’t like what just happened I just hit CTRL-Z.

Perhaps equally important is if I did something accidentally in a piece of software. Since I just did something accidentally I cannot reverse it by un-applying a setting or a formatting or whatever, because I literally don’t know what I just did. All I know is I did not want to do it so I just hit CTRL-Z.

Now, let’s talk about EstalCAM as the example. It’s not just about toolpaths. Let’s use grouping. In other software if I group something together and don’t like it, I just “undo it” and then re-create the group the way I wanted. In EstlCAM, I have to click on the group’ed objects and then ungroup them. There are more examples of that type of thing in EstlCAM.

So to come back to your original question, my assumption (and this might be a stretch but would explain things) is that most people rely and expect the example undo behavior I describe above. In fact, so much so as soon as they use something that does not, it sticks out. I would be willing to bet that within the first 3 minutes of trying EstlCAM, I hit CTRL-Z for something and realized it did not work. Obviously I just have to adapt, but I am just trying to provide potential explanation.

That make sense?

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It does to me. Undo is so useful, and I don’t realize it until it is gone. You can spend a ton of time manually adjusting toolpaths. Then to have to delete it because you made a mistake is annoying enough. Worse than that, if you are just trying to learn as you go, you go down several paths that don’t work out. Having to start at the beginning again is a huge pain.

The memory can definitely be managed to handle undo. You don’t have to save the entire state, just the inputs that lead to each state. You can also do lots of shared memory optimizations to make the multiple states in the history take as little memory each as the difference. It’s rarely trivial to code undo, but Estlcam isn’t trivial software either, so it is well within reason to hope for that as a new feature.

IMHO, anything that uses a mouse, should have an undo.

I second getting rid of the modal windows. Depending on the graphics toolkit it was made in, this may be trivial or impossible. I assumed my pain was all because I am using it in wine.

That said, the value proposition that Estlcam provides is definitely worth it. These annoyances aside, it does what it advertises, and does it in a very simple way. I haven’t gone searching for other options, but I haven’t seen any nearly as useable.

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I agree. The fact remains that with little or no experience I was able to do cutting and a few non-novice operations just by following Ryan’s webpages and using EstlCAM without reading any documentation per se.

Amazing.

P.S. CTRL-Z for my mouth would also be a feature I could use but will probably never be implemented.

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I think I see now. I have almost trained myself out of ctrl z. In solidworks that command works but has about a 10% chance of crashing it. So I save often, and manually undo instead of keys. Estlcam triggers my CAD brain for sure. I guess I am just used to not using it, as I would rather redo something than crash the program.

I use hotkeys for tools though all the time and two hands on controllers in cad so maybe that has something to do with it.

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the undo command of Estlcam is what did it for me.

I need to be able to “recalculate” the tool paths, edit or tweak them.

I am not saying its a bad product, I am saying for someone who likes to recycle old files, or re-use, I found estlcam either lacking or too hard to use.

sure, if I mastered it, or started from scraTCH all the time, maybe it would have worked, but I felt that the vectric product was more dummy friedly.

and it didnt hurt that there millions of youtube video’s on doing things 20 different ways

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I hear people say “if you make a mistake you have to start over” and I am confused. You can switch back to the select tool “the arrow” and click on any toolpath you have created to edit it. Then you can either change the parameters or press DELETE to remove it.

I guess I don’t see the problem.

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