new to cnc, about to buy a mill, need cam suggestions.

[e343mg]

Hello Everyone,
I've been trolling around this forum for the last couple of days and have been trying to absorb as much knowledge as possible on subject of cnc milling. I'm a freelance 3D artist and sculptor who works in nyc area and I'm about to purchase a desktop mill. I primarily work in zbrush and modo and sculpt characters and creatures for animation and games.

I'm interested in realizing my designs in castable wax and aluminum, which is why I'm looking into milling. I was initially interested in 3D printing but after doing some extensive research I didn't feel right investing in a 3D printer especially since the materials can be really expensive and the technology is so proprietary.

I'm fairly certain I'm going to go with a Minitech 3 Pro or possibly even 4 with a 4 axis rotary option to mill out my parts. I was planning on kicking out stls from my cad software (modo/zbrush) and cleaning and splitting them up in materialize magics.

Does anyone have any cam recomendations to help create simple and robust milling solutions for this kind of character construction. My characters would have that expensive comic character statue level of detail and I planned on separating undercut areas with magic and reconnecting after all the parts are milled. Most of the milling I guess would be done in 4 axis.

My ideas for a cam solution were:
Deskproto
VisualMill
SolidCam
Alibre Cam
SprutCam
MasterCam (obviously out of my price range but maybe down the line.)

I'd probably download the trials and get a good idea of all of them to figure it out, any suggestions or input from you guys would be great; from my experience working in animation each software has its strengths and weaknesses.

-e.

[HuFlungDung]

I suspect rapid prototyping would be the easiest solution because it is basically 'tool-less' which means you don't have to spend hours recutting and recutting to bring out the finer details. Surely it cannot be more expensive than a $60K mill and a $10k rotary axis?

Is the actual material consumption all that great in rapid prototyping? Can you not make the models as a shell so that you fuse barely any material?

[WayneHill]

e343mg,

http://www.ems-usa.com/

3D printer starting at $19.9 K