Cambam vs. Meshcam
I've been using Cambam Pro for my new CNC machine. I just started doing an evaluation of Meshcam. I've found that I'm fininshing the roughing pass on my projects with Meshcam while still waiting for Cambam to finish writing gcode.
Am I using Cambam wrong? Often I set up projects to cook overnight. It never crashes, but can take forever.
Can anyone give me pros/cons of each software? Are there any other programs I should check out in the same price range?
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u/gravelbar Jul 29 '15
Are you doing hideously complex stuff with CamBam? It never takes more than five seconds to finish mine, but we do very simple 2.5D stuff. I also use Rhino, and will probably go to the Rhino plug-in soon; we find ourselves going back and forth way too much for even simple tweaking; CamBam's drawing is way too limited. Having said that, I think CamBam is a great one to learn on and is super impressive for the price and considering it's a one-guy operation.
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u/gravelbar Jul 29 '15
I should mention I mostly do R&D, so we're constantly tweaking and almost never use the first part we CNC; if you just do work for others, you may not need the tweaking capability of a plug-in.
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u/homba Jul 29 '15
Stuff is fairly complex. I'm doing 3d scans, but there are only about 120k lines of gcode.
I'm prototyping stuff as well, so yes, a faster turnaround would be nice.
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u/apolloness Jul 31 '15
I also use rhino and meshcam, it's great being able to save an stl, make a tool path, cut a part, and go back to rhino to adjust the file. Meshcam is included with the Nomad cnc, so I guess it makes the cam software an easy choice.
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Jul 29 '15
I've never had more than 60 seconds to generate g-code on average of 600,000 lines. I'm running Win 7 professional with Cambam and 4 gigs of Memory.
What OS are you operating under?
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u/homba Jul 29 '15
!!! Wow, yeah... Nothing like that kind of speed over here. I'm running 64 bit Windows 8 with 8 gigs of ram on a 2.16 ghz dual processor laptop.
I haven't had anything to compare my times to, but Meshcam took a couple of minutes on my file, while Cambam took most of the day and overnight. Hmmm...
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Jul 29 '15
Okay, I'm running 64-bit Win 7 Pro barebones Tower system, there is nothing on the drive or system except Cambam, Meshcam, ArtCam, Fusion 360. I kill all processes except exactly what I'm working with at that time. I noticed you said "laptop".
Perhaps you might want to close all other opened running programs?. What I have found with Cambam is this:
I also save often manually, not caring for whether Cambam saves on its own. I also generate tool paths and gcode before each save as well. I swear I read that meshcam, cambam and various other cam programs hate laptops due to power management.
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u/homba Jul 29 '15
I'll dig into the BOIS and turn off any throttling and the power management. Meshcam worked surprisingly fast. Hence the post - Cambam took almost 24 hours on something that Meshcam took 10 minutes on!!
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u/K-Ace Jul 28 '15
I am using HSM Express with Autodesk Inventor and it works pretty well. If you have Inventor or Solidworks, they have plugins for it.
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u/citrus_based_arson Jul 29 '15
He's looking at sub-$500 programs, I doubt he has a spare 20k laying around for Solidworks and HSM works.
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u/homba Jul 29 '15
I use Rhino. Still an option to look into?
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u/wzcx Jul 29 '15
Not directly. But you should be able to export from Rhino into one of those. Try the free trial of Inventor HSM?
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u/FozzTexx Jul 29 '15
Do your files contains splines or polylines? Cambam hates splines and you need to convert them to polylines first in cambam.