Hello and a plea for help

[Westy]

Hello everyone.

I am new to CNC so please try and be patient with me

I have managed, with the generous help of a friend, to convert a Seig X2 Mini Mill to CNC control - just the basic X Y Z axis which uses a pc running Mach3 to control it.

I have managed to program it to cut straight lines etc, and can even make it cut diagonals, but what I am trying to do is totally beyond me and I was hoping that someone would be able to help or point me in the right direction.

What I have been using the machine for is, along with my lathe, machine parts for a custom target rifle I am building at the moment (Air Rifle running at a legal limt of under 12 ft/lb in the UK)

My problem, I have no idea how on earth to do CAD and so, as far as I can tell, am totally unable to acurately program curves into Gcode.

From what I have gathered, if I could draw the shape I want into a CAD program - for example AutoCAD - then this software can then port out in a format that can be read by Mach3 and turned into Gcode ?

Is this correct ?

Does this make sense ? lol

My question - and sorry for going on so long - can anybody give me advice on how to learn the basics of a CAD package able to output in Mach3 friendly format, and which would be the best package to learn. (By best - read easiest and simplist)

Thanks in advance
Westy

[Al_The_Man]

You have the CAD, what you need is the CAM part of CAD/CAM this take the cad file and places tool paths with offsets etc and turns it in to G code,
Do a search for CAD/CAM as some have a limited function demo version.
If you want a free simulator, there is MicroTech CNCSimulator, but you need to write the program in Gcode if you do not have it converted by CAM.
Al.