new (to us) router, choosing software...

[Matt McColley]

I am so happy! I finally convinced my boss to replace/upgrade our CNC router. After a few months of scouting auction sites, etc... I found a CNT Motion Systems 900 series with servos, tool changer, 10 HP spindle, and 15 HP regen. blower vac. table. It's in great shape and only 4.5 years old.

The PC has BobCAD v21 on it and uses WinCNC.

We've been limping along with an old DT Tool router with no vac. table, no tool changer, old steppers and drivers, DOS version of CNC Controller. We started with BobCAD v17 and upgraded to v20 when it came out.

So you can imagine that this is going to be a big improvement for us.

So here's my dilema. I've convinced my boss that we should spring for a seat of Enroute and get the + package with the optimizer.

But I'm basing that decision from a demo I sat in on at a Multi-CAM open house two years ago and the many positive comments from guys in our industry.

I've got the BobCAD sales rep. hounding me and I can pick up a seat of the low end BobMill package (we run both Solid Works and Auto CAD) and upgrade our existing BobCAD to V23 for just over a grand.....

So now I'm doubting whether or not Enroute is really worth the extra coin.

Thoughts and opinions from any of you who have experience with both BobCAD and Enroute would be much appreciated.



Is the

[ger21]

What you produce will dictate what software would be best for you.

[Matt McColley]

What you produce will dictate what software would be best for you.

75% of our jobs on this machine are 2D profiling in wood or plastic panel with holes or slots.

The owners bought a small architectural mill work shop and run it as a separate division, so we support their CNC needs as well. These jobs have been mostly 2D profiles with dado and hole drilling operations, along with a few simple sign jobs (routing simple text with a ball nose cutter).

We also have a corrugated sample table that is set up with a foam head (3.25" tangentially controlled oscillating knife) that runs non-stop for custom case inserts. There are some materials that don't run well on this machine, that we know will route well. These jobs consist of pocketing operations with a hockey rink shaped profile through cut at the end.

We've no quoted a couple complex geometries with true 3D contouring. These don't come up very often, but I know that we could cut them on a router with good Z-axis position control and an adequate vacuum table.

My problem with BobCAD is that it is cumbersome and I need to have a "draftsman level" person cook up the .tap files and run the machine.

On our corrugated sample cutter (Data-Tech M-series), the proprietary software is a breeze and we've successfully trained several foam assemblers to run it. They pull a .dxf file off of a partitioned drive on the network and then simply select the material type and thickness from a queue of saved settings and send the job file to the table. They also set up their own arrays, even nesting parts very easily with that package.

.tap files are invisible, as the software automatically cooks them up and sends them to the machine as a job file.

I'm hoping to find software for the new router that is nearly as easy to run as the Data-Tech.