Hardware Requirements of Universal GCODE Sender

Universal Gcode Sender is the software I used to control the CNC machine. It is a full featured gcode platform used for interfacing with advanced CNC controllers. As per their website, here is the list of features:

Features

• Cross platform, tested on Windows, OSX, Linux, and Raspberry Pi.
• Executable All-In-One JAR file - if you have java there is nothing to install. The JAR file includes native dependencies for all supported operating systems.
• 3D Gcode Visualizer with color coded line segments and real time tool position feedback.
• Duration estimates.
• Over 3000 lines of unit test code, and another 1000 lines of comments documenting the tests.
• Configuratble gcode optimization:
  • Remove comments
  • Truncate decimal precision to configurable amount
  • Convert arcs (G2/G3) to line segments
  • Remove whitespace

Based on my actual expeience, this software will work fine with small pc's like raspberry pi, atom-based pc's, or any pc lower than i5. But if you plan to make complicated designs with gcodes greater than 10Mb, it is highly recommended to use pc's with at least i5 and 8Gb ram with Video Card, not the video card built in the CPU itself.

Z-Axis Dust Cover Prototype

I have previously said(X and Z Axis Upgrade) that the designs of my cnc has provisions to add dust covers on each axis. I actually have not created one so I decided to create a prototype for the z-axis.

It wasn't difficult to create the dust cover, with skectch-up, creating the prototype is peanuts.

Here's the parts before assembly:

Here's how it looks like when assembled:

This will surely perfectly fits in front as shown here:

And here is the final product:

This is only a prototype so I used black electrical tape to join the parts together. It would be awesome if aluminum plate about 0.5 to 1.5mm thick it would even be so much better if stainless steel plate will be used. It will really make the cnc machine good looking at the same time you are prolonging the life expectancy of the machine not to mention lowers maintenance cost.

The advantage of creating a prototype, is that it will let you discover the advantages and disadvantages and by identifying the disadvantages which are primarily features that will make it more useable, you will have the option to include these features in the final design.

VisualCad with FreeMill A great TinkerCad Substitute

I used to have given up using VisualCad with FreeMill plugin installed because it basically slows down my quadCore Atom mini laptop given that it is way above the minimum hardware requirement of the Software. On the brighter side, I could not resist the feature wherein I could specify the x/y step distance. This is feature allows me to specify the quality of the wood carving output of the Cnc. This extremely important feature is what ArtCam don't have considering that it is a very very expensive software.

The downside of VisualCad is that I could not add 3d letters and numbers or it may have that feature, but, it is very difficult. I need to do more extra research on this. Ok, going back to the original subject, I tried to explore the software(VisualCAD) again but this time, I will be using a hardware with core i5 with video card, and I was so surprised with the result. I could now edit even the stl with very complex design and I can do solid manipulation just like what I usually do with tinkercad which is great! I can do great stuff with this thing but looking into it deeper, I found out that the software lacks another very important feature, I could not specify the z step distance which is the strength of ArtCam, but I found a great way as work around to ignore this feature, anyways, I realize even with this feature around, I would still need an end mill with extra long cutting length, so it is not really important, but it is a good to have feature to make it and extremely awesome software.

So from now on, I will be using VisualCad with Freemill plugnin as my primary cad software because its free. I will still be using tinkercad for 3d printing.