Hi everyone,

I am very new to this CNC thing, so please forgive me if it is a stupid
question.

I am going to get my first CNC machine this week (a cheap 3018, nothing to
write home about) and trying to figure out in advance how to do some things.

One of the things I would probably mill are wooden dowels and floating
tenons.

I wrote this amazing program in openscad to describe the dowels:
for(i=[0:35:140])
translate([25,i+20,9])
rotate(a=[0,90,0])
linear_extrude(height=200)
circle(d=18);

However, I discovered that I could not find and easy way of making this into
a working gcode (for free or close)

The closest I found was Estlecam.

If anyone can help me get on the right track it would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
Moshe

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estlcam is really good. my main problem with it is that it is windows only.
pycam looks like its just the thing i need!
Thank you!

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Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/

Have you considered FreeCAD. With FreeCAD you can open OpenSCAD scad and csg
files. You can then use the path workbench.

Note: The path workbench has been improved in version 0.17

To successfully import scad files you need to set the path to OpenSCAD in
the OpenSCAD workbench preferences.

To import 2D hull & minkowski objects you need to set the option to allow
the DXF library to be downloaded and updated. It is under the import-export
option of preferences.

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I have noticed that pycam does not handle v bits, which is what I have now.
It does look extremely powerful otherwise.
I'll give freecad a go. Can't remember why I didn't try it.

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You might want to checkout this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4JUnB1AHdY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4JUnB1AHdY

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Alas, freecad aborted on almost everything i tried.
heekscnc did the job, but very slowly
pycam it is!

thank you all for your help!

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It installed very smoothly for me on mint
Try:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

As stable repository has changed drastically over the last few months with
new kernel

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