Newbie- picture engraving software

[davidbhewes@com]

Where can i find a free, cheap or trail software for picture engraving? I am not sure if the is the right term. I am going to buy Mach 3 and I would like a way to take a photo and create a 3d wood carving.

[blackbeard52]

Vectric Photo engrave...www.vectric.com (trial)

[davidbhewes@com]

thanks...anything cheaper

[Switcher]

CAD to Mill DXF Conversion to gcodes for the low price of $25.00.

http://www.cad2gcode.com/id31.html

(I havn't tried this yet, looks good for dxf files)


.

[Mike Stevenson]

I tried cad2gcode before I bought Vectric. cad2gcode was not as good as Vectric was at converting a photo to the vectors that actually drive your machine. Complex photo detail has much better resolution in Vectric also. I think cad2gcode is certainly worth a try to get your feet wet. Ultimately I think you will like Vectric software better when you see the wood creations actually coming off your machine.

[jhowelb]

Originally Posted by davidbhewes@com Where can i find a free, cheap or trail software for picture engraving? I am not sure if the is the right term. I am going to buy Mach 3 and I would like a way to take a photo and create a 3d wood carving.

Mach has Lazy cam built in.

[dertsap]

http://cnc4free.org/

doesn t get any cheaper than this at 20 bucks for the tutorial and all the software is free , the next best thing to produce as high quality pictures would be artcam at however many thousands of bucks that is ,
i feel the freeware still rides higher quality reliefs than artcam

[davidbhewes@com]

I have the trial version of lazycam but can not figure how to get it to work. I imported a picture and nothing happened. I did not see any helpful info in the help so I thought it did not support it. Does anyone know how to use it?

[Mike Stevenson]

Lazy Cam does NOT convert photos into a machinable cad file like Vectric does. Belive me Vectric is the way to go if you want to go from a photo to a CNC program fast. Lazy Cam will however create a tool path if you already have a cad format file like a DXF.

[jhowelb]

Originally Posted by davidbhewes@com I have the trial version of lazycam but can not figure how to get it to work. I imported a picture and nothing happened. I did not see any helpful info in the help so I thought it did not support it. Does anyone know how to use it?

Demo won't do it, you should even buy Lcam Pro.

In Mach click file>lcam
then click image at top of page, when you've processed the image click gcode.

[yohudi]

Originally Posted by davidbhewes@com thanks...anything cheaper

Try CamBam...

camBam will generate gcode from a greyscale image without any problem whatsoever.. there's a free beta.. and lots of help and support via the CamBam forum..


hope it helps

[Tony Mac]

Hello David,

PhotoVCarve user and CNC machine builder Stefan Welschoff from CNC-Wood in Germany carved this stunning 3D photograph using PhotoVCarve.

Tony