Router for CNC machine

[Ollie78]

@Spectric There is open source software for various things. Free cad for 3d, gimp which is like photoshop etc. There is machine control stuff which is free too. However there is often a compromise somewhere.
It's like Linux for pc its great and you can do most stuff, but you are likely to have to fiddle with it and take time to get it to work right, whereas windows (though not without its issues) just works quite easily. Buy software, install, use.
I think with the machine control the small price of uccnc us a no brainer, it just works really well without too much faffing about.

I think for some its fun to use all free stuff and a hobby in itself getting the machine running, but for me I just need it to work, I am more interested in what it can do than making it work.

Ollie




Ollie

 

[Spectric]

To be honest I don't know that much about software, what is open source & what is not,

A lot of software is a companies Intellectual property and although you may have some form of interface what lies within is not disclosed or openly documented but with open source third parties can access or develop versions of the original. An example from the world of camera's is the RAW file format, each camera oem has their own format, with Nikon it is NEF. These camera specific formats have a limited lifetime cycle and in twenty years time you may have images that you cannot do much with, and as the NEF format is proprietry you are stuck. If you convert to the Adobe DNG format this is an open source format and well documented so you could still develop something to use your images, hope this helps.

 

[martin.pearson]

A lot of software is a companies Intellectual property and although you may have some form of interface what lies within is not disclosed or openly documented but with open source third parties can access or develop versions of the original. An example from the world of camera's is the RAW file format, each camera oem has their own format, with Nikon it is NEF. These camera specific formats have a limited lifetime cycle and in twenty years time you may have images that you cannot do much with, and as the NEF format is proprietry you are stuck. If you convert to the Adobe DNG format this is an open source format and well documented so you could still develop something to use your images, hope this helps.

I actually thought open source software was free but that not all free software was open source if that makes sense lol, I don't tend to use much in the way of free software, especially if it is for business use. Things may well be different these days but years ago when I started to look at it the free software I looked at was very badly supported & finding any sort of help or advice was almost impossible, software was also badly documented so even learning how to use it was a challenge, having said that the internet at the time wasn't anything like what it is today so those problems may not exist today. I use a range of software as I do a few different things but it is all paid for.
I have a camera but photoshop will import raw files so I don't think I have even looked at the manufacturers supplied software lol, then the camera is not a big part of what I do so maybe that is why I haven't looked into it more.
The other thing is that my circumstances are different from a lot of other peoples, I was medically Discharged from the RN & received a war pension, it means that I don't have to rely 100% on money made by the business, if I need to buy something it's not a case of having to decide if I want to eat for the next week or buy something that might help my business lol

 

[Keithflemo]

I would be interested to know what routers people are using in CNC woodworking machines. Size of CNC around 1000mm X 1000mm.

Hi Dave
I just got a 2x4 cnc it is a i2R-8 it's the same cnc as the American company AXIOM ar8 1st ever cnc machine so it's a learning process at minute