Werowance builds a webster

[aka9950202]

Great build. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

Cheers,
Andrew in Melbourne

 

[werowance]

Bob, what program do you use to run your cnc? I dusted my router off and had to load up another pc to run it last week and couldn't find the old windows program I used to use (cant even remember its name) so I started using linuxcnc to drive it. desk engrave doesn't seem to generate usable code for linuxcnc as the simulated tool path and even with a test dry run it only does a roughly 45deg line and stops. looked at some other text to gcode software and none of it was free that I could find. pluss deskengrave only does 1 line of text right? just wondering how well it worked for you and if you had any more insight or recommendations?

For engraving text, I use a freebie program called DeskEngrave. It's an old (Windows XP) program that still works for me. Takes either text you enter or a file and uses Windows fonts for the output. More info at http://www.machinistblog.com/deskengrave/ (just a random web search - I don't know the site)

For turning a jpeg into an engraving, I've used DeskProto, my CAM program. I can combine them both into one piece of work, but it takes a bit of calculating because the two programs don't talk. I use the file from DeskEngrave to do the text and DeskProto to do the figure.

For example, the lower receiver for an AR-15 I built.
View attachment 111613

 

[CFLBob]

I've only used it with Mach3 on a Windows PC. It seemed like pretty straightforward G-code. I don't have a LinuxCNC machine at the moment, but I do have a G-Code test program I could look at. I'll see if I can find a way to look at it.

I've only used it for simple one line things. I think I remember doing two lines by using two files.