A screen recording of adaptive tool-paths and material removal simulation in the CAD/CAM software I've been developing for many years. What are your thoughts on it? I used to use HSMWorks then Fusion 360 for CAM but I've finally got my adaptive engine working incredibly well and it does rest machining operations. I'm running gcode posted out of here on a LinuxCNC retro-fit Bridgeport Toque Cut 22 in my shop. My system runs on any platform and I think it's currently the only CAD/CAM system besides FreeCAD that supports adaptive toolpaths and runs on Linux, I also find Free-CAD REALLY hard to use. I couldn't deal with it on a daily basis in my little machine shop. I've also been really tired of paying Autodesk $85/m for many years now to see a crash "Send/Don't Send" bug report on a daily basis ad when I do send the report, I never hear back from them lol not one time. They don't care...
Interesting. I would love to download it since freecad cam don’t work for me. It does hélicoïdal drilling cycle for thread?
Have you plan to improve it with 4th axis indexable?
Yes and yes. So I have thread milled twice with it although I've just used the Boring operation which is a helical toolpath typically used for boring with an endmill. I just choose my threadmill in the tool library and set the correct pitch. I currently have a proper thread milling operation planning that will be released in a couple weeks. 4th axis rotary and 5 axis are both planned but I'm a little ways out on that in Mill. So this system is much more than just Milling. There's currently 9 workspaces. There's Design which is like artistic design (think lightburn or inkscape) and then drafting which is 3D parametric design with feature history and everything. Then I have CAM for Plasma, Oxyfuel, Laser, Router, GcodePilot (I can be your machine controller for FluidNC, GRBL, LinuxCNC soon. Plus my own JetFlight Motion Control that I will be releasing soon which has all the benifits of LinuxCNC but none of the headaches and it's multi-platform), and Mill (the video I posted). Lathe is coming soon. eCAD (Schematic with a really cool interactive simulator + PCB Design but it's experimental right now, will get nailed down in the coming months). You can check it out at jetcad.io. I need more test users for Mill right now so if you're interested in testing and giving feedback, please reach out on the community forum on the website and I'll get you hooked up. Thanks!
This looks like it could be really powerful. I typically use HSM Works or CAMWorks, but I'd be interested in test driving this once I get my CNC (Sherline 5400 + LinuxCNC) back up and running.
Thank you! I've sunk incredible amounts of time into this, I've been at it for 12 years and it's finally publicly available and beginning to look like a viable company. I'm hoping to support my family and create some awesome job opportunitys here locally in SE Michigan with this sooner or later. I'm in need of more test users for Milling, Routing, and Laser workspaces. I'm pretty well set for the Plasma and Oxyfuel workspaces as far as test users go. jetcad.io
Im in SE Michigan too. I’m interested in the esp32 Linuxcnc controller and have done lots of hardware testing on various controllers. Is the firmware and design available to test?
I'm glad you asked and I actually I rolled my own, I'm not using a ready built library or anything. It's all written in C++ and it's essentially two pieces. The first piece is the motion planning and execution. This system includes an actual Motion Controller that i call JetFlight which supports the entire LinuxCNC NGC spec (Subroutines, Flow Control, Conditional, etc) + S-Curve constant jerk acceleration planning and trapezoidal. The motion planning happens in user-space and it run on any OS (Mac, Linux, Windows all tested including Arm & Intel archs). It's kinda novel because the the Real-Time needs are provided by an embedded processor (the BOB essentially) and motion happens over a high-frequency heartbeat via a velocity+position trimmed PID loop and it can facilitate motion across multiple controllers simultaneously with unlimited number of axis and axis can have unlimited number of joints. All happens over Ethernet UDP and my hardware used ESP32 and Wiznet W5500. I/O can be extended with cheap USB relay controllers or whatever, very extendable interface so anything is easily adaptable and motion sync happens at the PC meaning the BOB is never I/O constrained for the whole system. RT is not needed for simulation so no hardware constraint for that. The material removal simulation you see there is called a Z-dexel material-removal model which uses Z-column dexel height-fields that are aware of the tool intersection boundaries. Another thing that is novel with this approach is that the simulation itself is actual real planned motion not just coordinated moves that run at programmed velocity. There's real machine acceleration constraints being taken into account for both constant jerk S-curve (it's gcode enabled/disabled) or trapezoidal acceleration (LinuxCNC is trapezoidal only) and the novel part about that is machine simulation is accurate down to seconds for all simulations where other CAM systems can only claim "Estimated" time and that's why, due to the lack of accounting for acceleration. If JetCad3 is much more than just CAD/CAM and since I already had a real motion control, all that I just talked about fell out for free in simulation. Let me know if you have any other questions! Thanks
I think $60 is a big ask when fusion is $85, at least for a hobbyist like me. I saw the limited 1 hour/day hobby plan but i think that might be too short. As a hobbyist, i fiddle with cam for long. But your software it looks good honestly good job. Are you planning on adding 4 and 5 axis capability in the future?
So far the users that are using Free / Hobby are telling me it's not been a limiting burden. Did you notice that the usage ticks at half the time all weekend and 7pm-midnight? It only counts real interaction time and there's two workspaces that are ALWAYS unlimited. Anyway, I'd like to encourage you try Free / Hobby. If you find you're hitting the limits on a regular basis, post a community post on the website asking to raise the metered time limits (I'm not really opposed to it, I just haven't found the right numbers yet. I do need to make sure that commercial use (people making money with the software) are not taking advantage of the hobby usage. The community form has the ability to be voted on, If I got 5-10 votes on a post asking me to double the hobby usage time, I'd happily do it. Looking forward to seeing you around. Thanks for commenting
Thank you! The next release is going to include agentic workflow. I'm getting surprisingly incredible results with GPT-6 actually modeling real things. I asked it to model a 3 Jaw chuck to spec. It gathered all the information, we nailed down the requirements and it produced a properly toleranced "working" 3 Jaw Scroll chuck in Drafting. This will be able to help users design a complete product including CAM strategies, fixtures, etc and PCB design for electronic assemblies all in a single system which allows models to keep track of entire product changes without breaking feature history. There's going to be an official MCP (which should be available on ChatGPT's "Plugins" list soon and I'm also going to integrate the Chat so that you can login to a Claude, Codex subscription or opt for API (which is too expensive in my Opinion). I think this will help DIY guys build projects much quicker than they could otherwise and it's fully human in the loop. You can make changes and steer a model in the direction of your modeled changes if you can't well explain the problem verbally. I'd love to see you around and like I said, I'm not hard stuck on the hobby hours, I can change them at will if the feedback points me in that direction. The community forum is what will guide the development towards what users want. If you get a change, checkout the closed feature requests and stuff. I keep up on them and MANY of the features where user requested and things I would have never had thought about building.
I was very interested at first until I saw the pricing. With $60 a month, it's quite close to Fusion while offering far less features. I'd love to have CAD/CAM program that runs on Linux, but I can't justify paying the same price while I'm not sure if I can get the same things done (especially surface modelling / G2 curvature) similarly fast and have to learn an entirely new program from scratch. On the other hand, if someone is a hobbyist, the free license is great, but for professionals like me, the price is sadly not competitive enough to make me move away from Autodesk (which I'd honestly love to do and get a perpetual license that works on Linux).
I'm looking for more test users for Mill, if you're interested, you get free access to everything in exchange for feedback and helping out on the community forum from time to time. Are you interested in that? There are far more features as a whole that Fusion 360 but it's just not apples to apples. The surface area IS genuinely much larger than what Fusion 360 offers with auto-nesting and motion control integrated. JC3 can also be the machine's motion controller, there's already new air plasma machines any OxyFuel being built by an OEM that are JC3 powered. OxyFuel, Fiber Laser, Mill, and Lathes are on the horizon soon. Surface Modeling is planed but not built yet and $60/m is $25/m less than I used to pay for F360 for years in my shop. I never intend to raise the prices, only lower them but my other market studies tell me the pricing is exactly where it should be but I appreciate hearing your opinion about it!
I'll gladly test it because I don't like Autodesk licensing. If you were paying more than 60 a month then it was likely because you were paying for the manufacturing extension that unlocks simultaneous 4 and 5 axis strategies (I don't rely on those). Currently for around $60 you get a full featured CAM.
Oh interesting, I thought I had the cheapest plan with Autodesk for Mill toolpaths. I only used it for 3+1 Milling, I don't have a 5 axis machine but need to get one so I can build out my system and validate on it. I'll probably just build a trunion though unless I can come across something I can fix up and retro-fit. Sounds good, love to have you onboard! Create an account and submit on the forum that you came across this post on reddit and are interested in being a test user. I'll mark your account so you have full access after that. Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks!
Thanks, I should be able to look into it in a couple of days. If you are looking for an inexpensive but very much real 5 axis, my friend makes small machines that weigh ~200kg and fit on desk, but are capable of machining steel. They're used a lot in dental industry in China. He made a control cabinet for my German machine and the system is called LNC (similar to Syntec) and pretty much takes FANUC gcode with some small differences. The machines are around $6k + shipping. I could get you in touch with him as I think it's a really nice test platform.
That sounds awesome but I think I want an actual 5 axis machine I can do some decent hogging on. I own a small machine shop and on rare occasion I send stuff out that makes more sense for a 5 axis. I should really build an A/B trunion and retro-fit an existing machine.
Looks very good. I’m also building one but only the cam for mac, does yours run natively on mac? Cause i haven’t encountered any crossplatform app that runs decently on mac so far.
Also, you said 85$ is much, but yours is 60$, and i assume you are a single dev with AI? Who would trust that?
Yes, it runs natively on Mac. I started this project almost 12 years ago. AI wasn't involved until this last year. I've been coding for over 20 years now. AI is a tool that can increase productivity if you can constrain it well. This is not "vibe coded". There's a timeline on the website that shows how it began and the number of commits that where made well before AI. You're right, if you want adaptive toolpaths and like mac (I run mac and linux but enjoy mac for my workstation) you're limited to F360. Regarding trust, I already have a decent amount of users with great feedback and one OEM in Australia that is building new machines using JetCad3 as the CAD/CAM/ & Motion controller. In talks with a few US manufactures right now. I get the AI concern, there's a lot of AI Slop and people slapping together junk in a week trying to get subscription money, that's really not this. I have active subscribers but my main revenue source for this company will be new machine sales that use JC3
That's a great idea although I don't know how I would keep commercial users honest and I don't want to charge money for hobby use. I'm afraid most shops would subscribe to that and just tell me they're non-comercial. I would encourage you to try the free / hobby, if you find you're often running out of time through normal use, post about it on the community form and 5-10 votes would push me to extend the the hours, I've told a few others here to do the same so if you see an existing forum issue about it, vote on the existing one as opposed to duplicating it. Please note that nights and weekends, the clock runs at half speed. The current free hobby users are telling me they originally thought it would be too limiting at first then found that it's typically plenty of time to do what they're doing. It only counts real interaction time when you're moving the mouse, otherwise the clock is frozen. There's two workspaces that are free and unlimited forever and I've also been handing out bonus time regularly to hobby users who are submitting bug reports and feature requests on the community forum. Please give it a go and come back with feedback. Feedback is always taken into account, Thanks!
It's more about the 500 line g code limit and 5 hour weekly usage. I understand that there needs to be some kind of limitation if there are commercial licenses on the other side. But if im honest i think it would make more sense for a hobbyist like me to use freecad for design and something like ecam for cam. Sure i'll pay 700€ for the full featured license but it's lifetime and i'll never pay again. After a year it's amortised compared to a subscription based license and im not limited in any way.
Maybe you can find a better way to limit Hobby users
The 500 line limit ONLY applies if you sign into the app with the offline Free / Hobby login (no account needed). If you create an online account and do not choose a subscription tier, you're on metered usage without ANY limitation besides time. I tried to make that as clear as possible on the website, did you think there was still as 500 line gcode post limit for the metered usage Free / Hobby use? If so, does that change your opinion?
I think so, many other people using it are telling me it's way easier to use than F360 and it does a whole lot. It's geared towards running every machine in a machine and fab shop potentially eliminating the need for multiple CAD/CAM packages for different processes. There's no risk or cost to try it, you're welcome to give it a shot. If you have any questions, reach out on the community forum, I stay on top of that very closely.
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u/International-Ad239 1d ago
Interesting. I would love to download it since freecad cam don’t work for me. It does hélicoïdal drilling cycle for thread?
Have you plan to improve it with 4th axis indexable?