Meshcam to carbide motion

Yesterday I did a sample in meshcam and I pick two kind of bits for this job the things is I don’t know the format in which we need to save the file in order to be able to finish the job the carbide motion didn’t ask me to or stop to change the bit so carbide did the whole work with the same bit . This was my first time using meshcam.

Most CAD programs you must set the Post Processor. I do not use MeshCAM but it is associated with C3D so there must be a post processor for Shapeoko/Nomad. Just search for how to set a post processor and I think you will find your answer. If you use a generic or gbrl post processor you wont get tool changes and it is assumed you will have a separate gcode file for each tool.

What tools were you using? How were they defined? Post the .mcf file?

I’m curious why you decided to try Meshcam? I’v tried a few different programs but keep coming back to Carbide Motion. I do want to start getting into 3d (or is 2.5d more accurate?)

MeshCAM and Carbide Motion are quite different programs and would be used in concert:

MeshCAM is a 3D CAM program which will accept a DXF or STL file and allow one to create 3D toolpaths and write them out as G-code (.nc) files.

Carbide Motion is a program which controls the machine and allows one to load the G-code in a .nc file, preview it, then send it to the machine to cut.

What sort of 3D work do you wish to do? Usually the first step there would be choosing a 3D CAD program:

  • Blender if doing free-form sculpting
  • Alibre Atom3D if doing mechanical CAD
  • Moment of Inspiration if you want to use a tablet computer
  • Shapr3D if you want to use an iPad, Apple Pencil, and are okay with monthly payments
  • FreeCAD is you wish to use opensource

What sort of work do you wish to do and how do you wish to approach it?

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