Inventables Community Forum

Help With .STL Files

Projects
#1

At one point our business used 3D Printers for most of our creations. These of course don’t work with Easel. I’m ignorant when it comes to CAD/CAM design. We had someone that used to work for us that used to do all our CAD work, but he has since moved on to college.

I’ve seen in google some tutorials on how to convert a 3D printing .STL into one with tool paths that our milling machine would understand. I tried to no end to convert one, but it never works.

Is there a service or someone here that could do it for us, not for free of course. Any help is appreciated.

Jake

#2

Easel is not the software for this.

Can you give us an example of the kind of shape your STL’s are, and how you want to use them?
Full 3D carving or relief etc…?

Depending on what you have, and how you want it will narrow down the work flow options.

#3

MeshCam is a software program that converts STL files into Gcode. It is free for 15 days and pretty intuitive. I’ve been using it for over 10 years with my 3d rhino work. Basically you would download the software, open your file and then progress through about 7 steps to generate the toolpath.

http://www.grzsoftware.com/

#4

I use V Carve Desktop to convert STLs to tool paths. V Carve isn’t free, but if you already have it, it can do the conversion. There is a bit of learning curve to V Carve 3D work and V Carve sometimes doesn’t create the most efficient tool paths.

#5

Thank you to all that have replied. I guess I need to get a program that will export tool paths for Boxzy. My next machine is a XCarve so I can do larger projects.

#6

How do you import the STLs into V carve?

#7

What 3D file formats can I import into VCarve? (vectric.com)

Import > Import Component / 3D Model OR the Import a component or 3D model icon on the Modeling Tab.

#8

try this very easy to use . V&Co - Vectric Customer Portal vcarve pro