I have been interested in developing open 5+ axis CAM for quite some
time, but my time and resources never seem to match up.
I joined a local makerspace last year that already has a 5 axis mill.
They even have a 5-axis Solidworks CAM License. The mill has had the 4th
and 5th axes mechanically locked in place for years with nuts and bolts.
When I offered to get 4 and 5 running again there was an uproar about
how there would be too many problems for users (CAM, Crashes,
Complexity, etc.).
I haven't looked into the current PATH source for FreeCAD. If I can see
how to work with it I will jump in at some point.
-Bari
On 8/12/25 5:19 PM, Brad Collette wrote:
Greetings from FreeCAD land!
Last weekend the FreeCAD community had a very small gathering in
Springfield, Il. While we only had a handful of folks attending in person,
this was our third North American meetup and our seventh or eighth real
world gathering. (Our big meeting is every February in Brussels and timed
to correspond with Fosdem). For the last couple years, we've been meeting
in conjunction with the KiCAD community.
Anyway, the meetup in Springfield was dominated by interest in CAM. Almost
every attendee is either working on CAM or connected to a makerspace that
wants to use it. One of the highlights was a zoom meeting with Neil
Gershenfeld from MIT Center for Bits and Atoms and founder of the FAB
Academy. They are very anxious to incorporate more FOSS software in their
curriculum and are pushing FreeCAD hard to develop multi-axis CAM
capability. They are also willing to provide equipment or other resources
to accelerate development.
A few of us had also attended LinuxCNC meetups in the past and one
sentiment that was expressed repeatedly was; "We need a closer
relationship with the LinuxCNC guys!" so here I am to get that rolling.
I guess to start things off; Are you guys interested in a closer
relationship and exploring some joint development? Is this the best place
to communicate?
Cheers
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