Hi,
Estlcam is a CAM program and machine controller.
Both functions can be used independently:
- You can use it as CAM to create CNC programs for other machine controllers like GRBL, Mach3 or LinuxCNC.
- You can use it as machine Controller to run CNC programs created by other CAM software.
- And you can use both functions together.
Estlcam will upload its own firmware to the Arduino once you click the “Program Arduino” button in the “Settings” → “USB CNC Controller” tab. This firmware is very different from GRBL and won’t work with UGS or other GRBL software - so you can’t use both at the same time. But you can reprogram the Arduino with GRBL at any time if you don’t like Estlcam.
The main advantage of Estlcams machine controller is continuous jogging and Xbox gamepad support.
It also does a lot of preprocessing on the computer instead of sending the original g-code to the Arduino. This way the motion planners look ahead is unlimited and 255 instructions can be buffered in the Arduino → very smooth program runs even if there are hundreds of code lines per second (e.g. when using trochoidal milling).
At the moment Estlcam may not work with some Arduino UNO clones because it uses 500kbit for comminication which seems to be no problem for the original but is an issue for some clones and fakes. I’m currently working on a fallback to lower speeds to solve this.
Christian