CAM between Inventor and LinuxCNC

Just out of curiousity,what are you gonna be running as 5axis with EMC?This definately changes what type of cam system you will need.Is it a 2 axis table on a 3 axis mill or a rotating gimble head?What kind of work are you doing?

The best 5 axis I know of is Surfcam,Ive heard Unigraphics and Pro Nc are good also,along with Delcam.

You might check out the eval copy of Mecsoft Visualmill,as the 5 axis system is 5k and 5axis anything else is 15-20....

If you are just getting started with a 3 axis system,check out Vector,it will do a lot,but then again for the 800 it will cost you,you could get an entry level copy of Mecsoft.

I know none of us ever do this,but there are torrent sites......

Just out of curiousity,what are you gonna be running as 5axis with EMC?This definately changes what type of cam system you will need.Is it a 2 axis table on a 3 axis mill or a rotating gimble head?What kind of work are you doing?

Currently we have many manual mills and lathes but initially we converted a large mill-o-planer 2axis table with 2axis mill head (one up/down and one rotating) which is obviously manual and we are getting difficulty to convert the same head to 3axis due to some limitation with previous design. so we decided to run 3axis for a while and have some CNC experience then get a new universal 3axis head to make it full 5axis. Before going to 5axis, there is 4 lathes and 2 mills as well to convert into CNC and EMC.

There is too much confusion in CAM side. So I decided to concentrate on free software first with some low cost 3axis CAM's then decide for 5axis later. BTW Madcam 5axis is also a good choice but you need rhino for that all under 2.6k.