Everything is half scale...

Twizzlermill wrote:

But hey, I'm getting there! Seeing the router move on its own for the first time was a glorious moment for sure. 
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That is the moment you forget all the trouble of getting there !

Oh, indeed, although there's always yet another thing to care about.

I haven't gotten around to building the dust collection system and there's no way I can run this thing productively without one.

Also, I need to learn how to generate gcode, I've already seen you put up a video about The Freecad path workbench, which is great because I'm a little familiar with Freecad (and want to keep it opensource software only, if possible).

I also need to properly link up my driver alarms, especially since I'm running two motors in tandem. That should probably the very next thing on my list.

...and properly connecting my z-probe, although I can manage without it for a while.

There are some free CAM software out there, PyCAM, BlenderCAM, FreeCAD, are for 3D stuff and they do work but never had the time to test them properly. Last several days been doing some FreeCAD design for Z axis of some CNC plasma cutters i am building, not that painful (except on the eyes) since it's been over 20 years that i did nothing 3D.
For 2D and 2.5D Inkscape is very good, i use it for plasma very often, it outputs gcode directly and is done in Python so i usually edit the post processing to suit my needs.

...wait, there's a BlenderCAM out there? This just might be it, Blender is the program I use for pretty much everything! I gotta take a look at this.

Twizzlermill wrote:

...wait, there's a BlenderCAM out there? This just might be it, Blender is the program I use for pretty much everything! I gotta take a look at this.

Oh you really should have not said that in public !
PhillC needs some small pictures for the QtPlasmaC wizards, so we would appreciate if you could have a look and see if you can help him, if and only if you can spare some time.
blendercam.blogspot.com/p/download-and-installation.html
Download the version you need from google drive, unzip and double click !
Do not try to install anything, it just works as is.
There might be the issue of missing two files, so if it opens and it does not show blendercam window view, scroll down through the blog post, there is info about those two missing files.

Well I can't promise anything and to be honest, I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but I'll take a look at it. I feel like I need to give back something; this forum was invaluable for me from start to finish.

But what I have to say, coincidentally, I had to work with Blender 2.79 today for the first time, and it's just a UI nightmare (I got into Blender with 2.. BlenderCNC still being on 2.76 doesn't bode well… But there seems to be some kind of add-on which looks interesting.

Speaking of software, if I may derail this thread even further, do you happen to know of a feed calculator or a database; something to put in material, router bit, etc. and get a good estimation for the right feed, spindle speed and so on?