Extremely Innovative Controller

[Bob Eustace]

Lots of interesting ideas here with the actual touch screen controller and the easy to follow cabinet software. I liked the guys thinking - Windows is forever changing and when working gobbles up most of the resources so dont use it. Of course what really attracted me was its native on Apple and works 100% wirelessly from the iPad. No keyboard needed on the machine was rather nice. Reckon they are onto something good wear wise using helical racks. Very well thought out package with lots of ideas for Botters to "borrow"! Very high quality video - at the bottom of the page.

http://www.lagunatools.com/cnc/5x10-Smartshop-CNC_router

Bob

[David White]

I like the create a remnant option

[adrianm]

I use a custom interface to SB3 to work with my touchscreen and it's a fantastic way to work. The standard SB3 interface isn't very touchscreen friendly unfortunately.

Touchscreens are definitely the way to go for CNC as there's no keyboard to gather dust and there's no risk of entering the wrong command.

As for the Windows thing I don't totally agree but I must admit that if I was producing CNC tools I'd supply a "PC" with a custom Linux build. That way there would be total control over what the customer was using.

I know from my time in IT that trying to support all the different permutations of hardware and software that Windows users have is an absolute nightmare.

[jTr]

Looks like they've taken all the great job management features of e-cabs, removed the parts editor sections and replaced with Sketchup for modeling. Toolbar on the left of editor screen is quite literally sketchup's toolset. This is a dream come true, and am excited to see someone had the intuition to put this together. :cool:

I've been training with ecabs and dragging my feet on taking the plunge for the SB link due to the fact that I'm a 5+ year veteran sketchup user, and am completely spoiled by the intuitive nature of it vs ecabs.

Question is: Should I hold my breath for a system that's literally the best of both worlds to be adapted to shopbot, or just get on with it and enjoy the benefits of ecabs in the meantime?

(It seems to me such an offering would likely be brought forth as a future version of ecabs anyway...?)


jeff

[dlcw]

If that isn't Sketchup I'd be very surprised. Looking at the cursor when he does operations they look exactly like Sketchup cursors. Rotate, pan, etc. all are Sketchup cursors.

I would love te be able to use this for my cabinet design versus eCabs. So much easier and much more intuitive. Drag and drop makes life so much easier then typing in exact X and Y and experimenting until you get it right.

[gerryv]

Although it's shown running on a MacBook Pro using Bootcamp or similar, it's actually Windows based program so should it not run fine on existing Shopbot's?
The fellow that created it pretty much says on their website/videos that he built it on top of Sketchup; like templates maybe? He also refers to using the Sketchup libraries which have a lot of cabinets and furniture in them. I wonder if they've run it on a Shopbot? Would it need a SB post processor?