CNC Shark Forum

Just delving into the whole wood cnc thing. I have purchased (but not delivered yet) the cnc hd4 extended with a 4th axis. It states it comes with the vcarve desktop software. Is this adequate to use on 4th axis projects? Do I need pro? I downloaded the trial desktop version but with its limitations (or maybe its my limitations) I do not see how to make that part come to life.

Is aspire needed? What do you guys/gals use?

Thanks
Terry

Terry
I use Aspire and it gives a lot of flexibility for 4th axis, In V-carve pro you have to use the wrapping gadget and turned profile. Aspire allows you to use Modeling to shape the wrapped model. My choise of software is aspire.
Rick

If you are just doing simple carvings Aspire is find. But for more detailed work you will want a full cad program. There are free one's like Blender and Sketchup Make. And those you pay for, few hundred dollars to several thousand. I use Sketchup Pro, not because it's the best but it's what I know best.

If you bought the extended bed then you should get VCarve Pro with it not VCarve Desktop. Desktop is limited to 24x24 project area and is included with the standard bed Shark HD even though they say the cutting area of the Shark is 25x25. Also you can not do rotary projects with VCarve Desktop so you at least the VCarve Pro. You can upgrade to Aspire if you want to make your own models and wrap them for a project but you can use the models that come with VCarve. If you want to use more than one third party 3d model then you will need Aspire or have to combine the models in a third party software before you import into VCarve Pro.

Once you have the HD4 and the 4th axis you can use our custom software to align the lathe after you generate your carving in vcarve or aspire.

http://nextwaveautomation.com/Downloads ... 0_Beta.exe

We have not identified any bugs in the software at this time.

Best Regards, Joseph Poirier - Sr. Software Engineer