Official Luthiers Forum!

I am wondering if anybody nows about this program and if it is usable to output Rhino drawings to a CNC Machine. Here is the link:

http://www.mecsoft.com/freemill.shtml

My CNC Machine should be here either today or tomorrow and a friend of mine who does a LOT of CAD work is picking up a full copy of RhinoCAD for me today. That will be about $800 or so and I think RhinoCAM would be another $800 so I am wondering if this program would get me up and running during the "learning period".

Thanks!

Shane

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Canada

FreeMill is just a nerfed version of Visual Mill. It only does parallel finishing passes. You'll want other options eventually, especially if you're cutting contours and things, but you can do a lot with parallel passes. I think that probably most people cutting guitar necks, bodies, etc, are using mostly parallel finish passes with a contour pass to cut them out.

So, short answer: you can do a lot with it.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Hi Shane,

I would like to invite you to email Joakim Moller from madCam at

joakim@madcamcnc.com and talk with him about madCam. If you would like to try it, tell him Mike said to give you a 60 day key to try either the full version (too much to list) or the entry level version which sells for $695 and has lots of good tool path strategies.

I use it, and have other users both here in the states and Canada that can vouch for the quality of this software.

Mike

Thanks Mike, I may take you up on that. The machine just arrived at the shippers today so I ran down and had a look at it and will take it home in the next couple of days, once a space is selected! I need to fire the unit up I guess to see what is what. So far the tech at Precix has been very good with taking my questions, so now I just better spend some time around the machine and go from there. As another luthier buddy of mine just told me "the thing is really stupid, it will only do what you tell it!" that puts the pressure on me to tell it the right thing.....

Shane

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Canada

Where/how exactly did you find this again?

You mean the machine Sheldon? It was on a local government auction site that I visit often and every once in a while purchase stuff from. Since I acquired the machine I have spoken with the Precix tech a couple of times and it seems that this machine will work very well for guitar related ventures. It has a milling area of 49" x 49" and a 3hp Perske head. It is now in my trailer and I will be loading it into my small shop in the next day or two, once I make some room. If you mean the software, well there is an active link in my first post above.

Shane

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Canada