Well, Now I have to hurry up and wait 3-4 weeks. Im new to cnc machining, but luckily I have a friend who uses $250,000 HAAS 5 axis machines at his job, So Im guessing he can give me some pointers. Anyway, I included the V-Carve PRO software with my order. Is this software intended to be used Instead of easel? If so, are there any other programs I need in addition to V-Carve that I need to run my new X-Carve? Thanks.
VCarve Pro will let you draw up or import drawings, then turn vectors in the drawings into G-Code tool paths. A great choice for this BTW. What it won’t do is feed them to the X-Carve controller. You’ll still need the Universal G-Code sender, or something similar to feed the G-code to the X-carve controller.
You should spend some time while waiting for your machine to watch the tutorial videos at Vectric.com for VCarve Pro.
What are some recommended Universal GCode Senders?
If you ordered V-Carve Pro - you are going to love it. I watched ALL of the video tutorials and after 8 years, still learn new things - especially regarding the new 3d capabilities. I have a parallel port and breakout board setup and run my steppers at 48 volts, so I use Mach 3 as my CAM software. It has hundreds of thousands of users (or so it seems) and is infinitely configurable… but I don’t think you can use it with an Arduino based setup. A parallel port/breakout board connects to stepper drivers like this setup: http://www.amazon.com/Stepper-Driver-TB6560-Nema23-Interface/dp/B00IADVM9C/ref=sr_1_32?ie=UTF8&qid=1435023780&sr=8-32&keywords=cnc+breakout+board
Obviously, this setup comes with stuff you don’t need like motors and a 24 volt supply. But more to give you an idea.
Be sure to watch the v-carve tutorials to take advantage of hundreds of little hidden features and shortcuts and have fun!
V-Carve Pro will allow you to draw up your project and generate the gcode files. Once you have the gcode, you’ll want to use something like:
Universal GcodeSender: GitHub - winder/Universal-G-Code-Sender: A cross-platform G-Code sender for GRBL, Smoothieware, TinyG and G2core.
Chilipeppr: ChiliPeppr - Hardware Fiddle
And of course you can just draw and run your project directly in Easel, or draw it in V-Carve Pro, export the file as an SVG, and import it into Easel as well.