program(s) info help

[mocnc]

well here is the situation that I have.........I have turbocnc, deskengrave, autocad2002, corel draw 10 deskcnc, now I kinda know what each program is suppose to do, but I am not 100% sure. First of is there any other programs (free if possible) that I would need to work my home made cnc. I purchased a set of plans from jck ("the pipe dream"), as well as his piker 4x pro controller. Now I don't want to have alot of over lap with programs for my cnc, so which of these should I use and why? Do I need any others? Is there a program out there so I could run a test of my g-codes to see the tool path in action on my pc instead of just testing and possible wasting wood? Please bare with me I am new to all this and I am slowly learning and building at the same time.

[jeffs555]

Here is a free CNC simulator that takes g-codes and displays the results. I have used it and it works well. http://www.cncsimulator.com/
Here is another free one, which sounds like it may work, but I haven't tried it. http://www.cnczone.com.com/autonc.htm

[imserv]

Originally Posted by mocnc well here is the situation that I have.........I have ......deskcnc, ..... Is there a program out there so I could run a test of my g-codes to see the tool path in action on my pc instead of just testing and possible wasting wood?

DeskCNC has a built in simulator. When you open a g-code program (.Dnc) in the DeskCNC editor, it is immediately drawn on the screen. You can single and multiple step through the code to display any particular section or line of code. There is also a 3D rendered display that shows the cuts made by different shaped tools.

If you have a DeskCNC controller board, you can run your machine with the same program that you use to create the g-code program. It's very simple to hook it up to a parallel port driver box.


Fred Smith - IMService
http://www.cadcamcadcam.com