Wasn’t sure where to post this. I am eagerly awaiting my first CNC machine and was interested in feedback on choice of computer leaning towards laptop. Does anyone have any advice on brand or specifications(memory, hardrive, processor). One concern I have is getting something that’s tough enough and problems with dust getting into laptop.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve
Hi Steve,
in the past i have used an old laptop (windows xp probably 8 years old) in my garage for operating my xcarve with easel.
now i use a new laptop to draw in easel of draftsight , and open it with easel or ugs on a old desktop pc in my garage.
For easel you don’t need any thing fancy. But if you are planning to use V carve pro or some other program that renders your 3d view, you might want to pay a little more attention on selecting your pc or laptop.
I use a very old Mac mini (one of the originals) to run UGS to drive the machine and I use an el-cheapo laptop to run VCarve (which is Windows only). Anything else I need to do I can use my iMac.
Not needed if running Easel due to the web app nature of it. But if you’re running say a design machine and a machine to run the x-carve, and you generate gcode on the design machine, look at using something like Dropbox ( www.dropbox.com ) . You can save the generated gcode file in a a special folder on your design machine, and it will automatically appear on your carving machine then. Much easier !
thanks for all the advice. got my machine today got an inventory done, looks all there, got the z carriage assembled and ready for a full day of assembly tomorrow. I purchased a new Toshiba laptop running windows 10, seems pretty zippy should do the job. can’t wait to see this thing in action!
thanks I’ll have to look into that.
to send code i am using a sony tap 11 tablet. being small and light it’s perfect for bringing in and out of the garage. it also runs rhino decently for making edits. it’s wireless keyboard is great when controlling the machine also.