I’ve been using my Nomad 883 Pro for about 5 years now. With it came MeshCAM v6, Carbide Create, and Carbide Motion.
Looking at the software that comes with the current Nomad 3, it states that the version of MeshCAM that it uses works specifically with the Nomad 3 and will not generate gcode for other machines.
So my questions is… will my version of MeshCAM create gcode that works with my Shapeoko Pro? I’m not sure if there are/were any limitations with the version of MeshCAM that I got with my Nomad.
Both the Nomad 883 Pro and the Shapeoko 3 use the same controller board. Well, mine do, anyhow.
I run the same VCarve postprocessor for my Nomad 883 Pro and my VFD-plus-BitSetter-Shapeoko 3 and they run just fine.
My mental model is that a Shapeoko+VFD+BitSetter is basically a bigger and more powerful Nomad 883 Pro, but the acceptable GCode for both machines is the same.
Well, that sounds promising. I suppose I could wait until I have my Shapeoko Pro up and running, then run a job, but I would hate to crash it on the first run if there are any issues.
The version of MeshCAM bundled w/ a Nomad is tied to that machine and will only output .egc (encrypted G-Code).
It should be possible to decrypt it by using a Nomad as a dongle — connect to the Nomad, select and load the file, click on the filename in Carbide Motion then copy-paste the decrypted G-Code into a new file.
Is that true for older versions of MeshCAM (v6)? I can open the .nc file generated with my version of MeshCAM with notepad and see the the gcode in plain text.