I have a new Shapeoko XL and it running great. I’m using V-Carve Pro v8 and Fusion 360 and either Universal Gcode Sender or Chilipepr post process sender ( really love Chilipepr). Never a hiccup or dropout so far but I’ve been running mosly flat stuff, just now looking a 2.5D.
That said, since I already have V-Carve Pro, am I missing some ‘WOW’ features by not having Meshcam? Will it do somthing I can’t accomplish in V-Carve? I was also concerned about the apparent dimensional 12x12 size limit of standard Meshcam (I have an XL).
I had a trial of Meshcam, but it expired before I got my machine.
The biggest benifit I can see is mesh cam can produce 3d g-code (cutting paths) extreemly quickly. I don’t know if V-Carve can produce 3d parts at all or is it just 2.5d?
VCarve Pro 8.x will produce 3D toolpaths for an imported .stl file. So it isn’t clear that you need meshcam. It is limited to a single .stl – but so is Meshcam. (It will do multiple 3D toolpaths in the same job for Vectric’s ‘clip art’ objects).
That said, 3D is Meshcam’s bread and butter so it may provide more flexibility. I own both but haven’t spent any real time evaluating VCarve’s 3D capability in depth.