Background: I have a few engraving machines, laser engraver uses Lighburn software, rotary engravers using Estlcam software.
I’m old school, and make my drawings in an ancient 2d drafting program. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around 3d CAD, my brain is wired to think of drafting in terms of pencil on paper. I draw my designs and save the results as dxf files.
Both Lightburn and Estlcam are integrated CAM/CNC programs, I can just open a dxf or stp file and the front end generates the appropriate g-code for the machine control back end.
I’m building a small CNC router, and thought I’d try LinuxCNC. It seems to run just fine on an old PC and I have most of the bits and pieces to make a parallel-port breakout setup.
I’m confused about generating g-code for LinuxCNC. What simple software is available in Linux to convert 2d dxf CAD files into g-code?
I’m old school, and make my drawings in an ancient 2d drafting program. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around 3d CAD, my brain is wired to think of drafting in terms of pencil on paper. I draw my designs and save the results as dxf files.
Both Lightburn and Estlcam are integrated CAM/CNC programs, I can just open a dxf or stp file and the front end generates the appropriate g-code for the machine control back end.
I’m building a small CNC router, and thought I’d try LinuxCNC. It seems to run just fine on an old PC and I have most of the bits and pieces to make a parallel-port breakout setup.
I’m confused about generating g-code for LinuxCNC. What simple software is available in Linux to convert 2d dxf CAD files into g-code?
