How to find GCode/Plans of things to build...

[Xephius]

I am new to the CNC community, and so have many questions. Luckily I have been able to find most of the answers I am looking for here, or in FAQ and web-pages referenced within various threads.
My wife and I have been bitten by the CNC bug. Why buy it when you can make it better. That being said, we are in the process of building a CNC router table. We have agreed to build a small "test" table to learn on, then build a larger table. I am sure I will have more questions on that later. On to the current question.
Where can we find CNC plans (gcode or cad) of things we might want to build? An example being cabinets for our kitchen, moulding/trim, furniture or even decorative items. It would seem with the huge hobby and professional CNC community getting together, there would be a open source repository of designs. I am not just looking for "free" stuff, I also am completely willing to purchase quality plans. I just don't know were to go look, or what to search for.
Thanks in advance for the help.

--John

[Mr.Chips]

Welcome to the CNCZone. There's a lot to absorb.

Here is a link to the area you are interested in. Lots of plans for machines.

http://www.cnczone.com/modules.php?n...category&cid=2


Good luck

Hager

[dertsap]

might be worth looking at buying some cad/cam ,if you get good at designing , the sky is the limit

well that and table size

[epineh]

As dertsap mentioned, as you are building your router, practice on a CAD program, get good at that and you will kick butt!!!

Welcome to the zone and good luck with your build(s)

Russell.

[Xephius]

Thanks for the heads up guys. I am adept in using 3D modeling applications such as 3D studio Max and a slew of virtual environment editors. Mostly BSP based. I have recently picked up Google's SketchUp and I have been wowed at how easy it is to work with. I have done several complicated enclosure plans with it for my tube amps. I can't imagine its as easy as taking a random cad file and converting it to a Gcode. How do you specify how many passes you want the router head to make on the material, the bit you are going to use, when to switch bits to make drill holes or counter sink holes, how to router the edge to round it off... These are just a few things that come to mind. Perhaps there is a tutorial on how to learn this process? I can draw up just about anything I want to make in SketchUp, how does that convert?

-Thanks, John

[epineh]

I think you have to get a plugin for sketchup to export STL files then you are away, I have seen it mentioned somewhere, I'll post a link if I can find it (it was on cnczone). If you are a whizz at 3Ds Max it exports STL's doesn't it ? (I am not a whizz at 3DS Max)

Sketchup is fun, am having a crack at it myself, amazed at what even I can do...lol

Try downloading DeskCNC it will import STL's directly and do the toolpath's for you. The trial version is limited to 1000 lines of code (I think) I have been using it and haven't run out of code lines, and I have been doing those dinosaur skeleton thingy's, they are only 2D though, 3D will burn up 1000 lines pretty quickly.

As for the passes and bits, you specify a depth of cut, and the machine makes passes until it reaches that depth, you can specify a finishing cut if you want. You setup the tools in software so it calculates the toolpath to suit for you.

I am really only a noob to all of this and it really is simple to create the g-code and run it, you just have to decide what software you want to use to do it.

Try downloading a few free trial versions and see how you go.

DeskCNC is nice for simple 2D pocketing and contouring stuff, it imports DXF directly and creates toolpaths easily, those skeleton's I mentioned take me about 30-40 seconds to create g-code for one piece, including scaling, rotating if I want, cutter offset, and setting origin points. I haven't tried 3D stuff yet, soon though.

Russell.