Howdy - I am interested in purchasing a CNC system to do 3D carving of guitars and inlay work. My only experience with CNC is using Rhino software to develop CAD, and MACH 3 (CAM) to generate tool paths, gcode and ultimately control CNC cutting process.
Question 1 - Has anyone tried third party CAD/CAM software, and more specifically, Mach 3?
Question 2 - Is the shark a good platform for someone looking to do a quick CAD design and cut out custom parts - or is it designed more for carving and signmaking? Alternative is a professional CNC system, which I know will offer all features but of course, like anything else, costs $3K more....
Any insights would be appeciated.
Cheers,
Ryan
CNC Software Compatibility
Moderators: al wolford, sbk, Bob, Kayvon
Re: CNC Software Compatibility
With regard to interface to the CNC machine itself - NWA provides that via the Shark Control Panel. To my knowledge, the Mach3 software does not currently work with the Shark ProPlus and HD - they use an Enhanced Control Box, and the current Mach3 software does not support interfacing with it. Mach 3 does interface with the control box that comes with the Shark and Shark Pro (it is a different model/construct). I think there is more to this story than is able to be said, let alone said well on a forum. I've been told that Mach is 'working' on improving / making changes to their software to enable its use with the Shark Enhanced Control Box in the future. What that timeline is, idk. I think this aspect is entirely out of NWA's hands, and up to the folks who own and develop Mach 3 to resolve / enable.
With regard to custom parts - in the end this is really a function of the design software. The Sharks come with Vectric VCarve Pro, some also come with Cut3D. Several of us have upgraded to Aspire. Vectric provides a fully functional download of any of these products from their web site - http://www.vectric.com. You could download the software, run through the tutorials, and make a judgement of this work flow vice a cad based workflow - at no cost beyond your time.
I know there have been posts in the past on this forum from folks in the instrument business, hopefully they'll chime in with their experience. You could also search the vectric forum for folks who are in the instrument business to get a sense of this.
I don't make instruments, so no direct experience to share - beyond the cost comparison for what I wanted to do, and finding that I can in fact do it with a Shark and the Vectric software, and not spend some to a lot more...
Hope this helps.
With regard to custom parts - in the end this is really a function of the design software. The Sharks come with Vectric VCarve Pro, some also come with Cut3D. Several of us have upgraded to Aspire. Vectric provides a fully functional download of any of these products from their web site - http://www.vectric.com. You could download the software, run through the tutorials, and make a judgement of this work flow vice a cad based workflow - at no cost beyond your time.
I know there have been posts in the past on this forum from folks in the instrument business, hopefully they'll chime in with their experience. You could also search the vectric forum for folks who are in the instrument business to get a sense of this.
I don't make instruments, so no direct experience to share - beyond the cost comparison for what I wanted to do, and finding that I can in fact do it with a Shark and the Vectric software, and not spend some to a lot more...
Hope this helps.