If you have the bed size adjusted you can get a sense of scale.
You will get a depth popup, for the pen I use 1mm or less, anything else set it to the thickness of your material plus a bit to cut all the way through. Click Engrave then just click on each line segment.Įxport. To use the pen you want to drawn on the line so use engrave (tool centered on line), if you were cutting a part you can choose part (tool edge on the outside of line), or cutout (tool edge in inside of line). Some people like to work from the center for round or oval objects. When you start your program the machine will work to the right and above where you start it from (represented by the blue plus). The little blue plus symbol is what your machine sees as 0,0 (x=0, y=0, generally the lower left corner of your work).
This is how to set your origin (or Home). Zero>Create arbitrary point, then select outside of the DXF paths. I scaled the crown 250x to get it to 150mm (5 3/4″). Select>Resize>Drawing Layers, then click on the DXF to select it. The crown imported at about 55mm wide I want about 150mm wide. This is whatever units you save your DXF as. This is what the crown looks like imported in inches as the initial units. File>Open – If your DXF is completely the wrong size try again with different initial units. I used this one in the video, Crown Vector. Get some files from here, (Need a new source, sorry).
You can use any vector program to make them, illustrator, SolidWorks, etc. Found in View>Grid I set mine to 10mm or 25.4mm=1in.įor this 2D or 2.5D work. DXF files are crazy sizes sometimes so to make sure your DXF is the right size change the grid. Step 3 – 2D gcode, Good for pen plotting or 2D milling (cutting things out) Do not exceed 8mm/s in the z plunge field unless you know what you are doing and know what firmware limits you have. I delete all the default tools and use this as a conservative test speed setting for an 1/8″ flat endmill in wood.
The creator of Estlcam recently updated his software for us! In the CNC Program Generation tab, choose Marlin (if you are using my firmware).ġ-Important – Set feed unit to mm/min- (this is what the marlin firmware needs).Ģ-Change the file extension “ gcode” so all the programs recognize it.
Choosing to end the program “above origin” is safe, “above last position” is the fastest. Setting the z-axis origin to the top of the material makes it easy to set the home position, along with that is program start – at origin. You should change the milling direction depending on what kind of material you are cutting, more on this in another post. This is how far above the material it should travel to before it moves. Step 2 – SetupĪfter restarting Estlcam, open the setup tab, these are the settings from the first window plus a few extra.Ĭhanging the clearance plane to something a little smaller really speeds up a job since the z axis is the slowest.
The first window that pops up I set the language, change the display units, and set it to show the feed rate in mm/s on the tool popups.Īfter you click okay close Estlcam and restart it to update the settings.
Using the default options in the installer, add Icon to start menu and desktop. Please buy a copy if you find this works for you. The installer is in German I think but the options are easy to understand. It also seems to be translated into every language I’ve ever heard of, if not you can add translations in the software. This was easily fixed by using a small craft knife to cut the parts that were not 100% through the wood.This software seems to do everything I want. The only real issues I had with the whole cutting process was any kind of warping of the wood, since the focus is so precise warping does have impact on the cutting process where I found sometimes not all cuts passed fully through the wood. First I click on Connect to connect to my CNC Machine, then Load to Load the GCODE file we saved earlier, then Print to Start the Cutting.īefore cutting please check your laser focusing.įor me I found my laser was focused best at 65mm from top of cutting surface, so I would manually adjust my Z height to take into account the thickness of the Work Piece, in this case 3.4mm so I adjust my Z Height to 61.6mm, then the GCODE moves the Z Height back up to 65mm during operation, with a Z height decrease of 0.43mm each pass I found the focus to work great. To be honest this is the easiest part, only requires 3 Steps.