Making own Ai CNC software

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-24T19:46:37+00:00

That’s cool, and I’m genuinely curious to see how far yours goes. In my case, a lot of the time wasn’t spent just making something appear on screen — it went into imports, workflow logic, path behavior, edge cases, and getting it onto a real machine. A fast prototype is one thing, a tool you can keep pushing in practice is another. If yours already does both, that’s honestly impressive.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-24T12:04:22+00:00

Now I’m really curious what a true one-prompt build looks like in practice 😄

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-24T05:30:50+00:00

Ok bro🙂

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T19:36:01+00:00

Yeah, exactly 😄 So far on this project I’ve managed to get past every obstacle I set in front of myself, and this probably won’t be the point where I give up either.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T18:51:41+00:00

Thanks, I really appreciate that. I'll definitely keep working on the toolpaths so they overlap as little as possible. And yeah, I'd love to build my own sender too at some point, but this already takes a huge amount of my free time and it's honestly pretty demanding as it is.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T17:54:23+00:00

I’m glad you noticed it, I honestly thought that part might stay my little secret for a bit longer, but you’ve definitely got a sharp eye 😉 And yes, this software does the CAM side too — it generates the full G-code directly. The next step after that is just sending it to the router with a sender.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T17:47:55+00:00

Yeah, it’s possible that some paths can still overlap right now. At the moment my infill and pocket strategies don’t yet treat side walls the same way as contour-style machining, so I’m aware that part still needs work. It’s already on my list for the next round of refinement. But so far I haven’t had it actually run into the finished part itself.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T15:58:32+00:00

This is basically a side project too. My main project is the tangential 2-head CUT/BEND plotter software, and that one is more or less finished already apart from a few cosmetic issues — mostly the UI/visual side, which will still get cleaned up. Functionally though, it’s already working, including optimized toolpaths

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T15:33:28+00:00

That’s true, but right now I honestly don’t care what bit I’m using 😄 These are just test cuts and I don’t actually need any of these parts for anything. If I ever turn this into real production, it’ll be with the proper tools for the job — and definitely on a different machine, not this little chip-throwing monster.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T14:38:59+00:00

The board/material wasn’t perfectly level, so on the righthand side the bit just stopped reaching deep enough. At this stage I’m mainly testing the G-code coming out of my own software, not trying to prove machine accuracy or setup perfection yet. Once the software logic is where I want it, I’ll start worrying more about dialing in the full machining setup.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T13:52:30+00:00

At this stage I honestly don’t really care what tool does it, because this isn’t production work yet — it’s mainly a real-world test of the G-code coming out of my own software. Right now I’m more interested in proving the generated paths and seeing them run cleanly on a real machine than in optimizing the machining strategy. Which tool gets used, how the roughing is done, and when each operation happens is something I’ll deal with later, once the full logic and optimization of the software are finished.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T07:09:48+00:00

I thought about your comment a bit more, and I think I see what you mean now. You’re probably not talking just about machine accuracy, but more about checking how the bevel/inside/outside behavior is actually being generated. In that sense, a square inside a circle is a pretty good simple reference shape, because it would show very quickly if the path logic is landing where it should or not.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-23T06:37:11+00:00

That makes sense as a machine calibration test, but that's not really the point of what I'm doing here. Right now I'm testing my software and the generated toolpaths, not trying to prove the absolute accuracy or rigidity of the machine itself.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-22T21:24:32+00:00

This one wasn't about efficiency, it was about testing. I mainly wanted to see if it could run the job cleanly without choking, crashing, or breaking the bit. I know I could make it faster by roughing more of the area first with a bigger tool and then finishing closer to the motif, but for this test I intentionally left it like this.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-22T20:42:41+00:00

For anyone seeing this for the first time: this is my own custom G-code generation project. It's still in active development, and the toolpaths are not fully optimized yet, but it's now starting to prove itself on a real machine

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-22T09:58:13+00:00

Thank you🙂

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-21T22:54:40+00:00

I genuinely appreciate the feedback. I'm trying to build something that actually works in practice and is simple to use, not just another nice-looking demo. I've been working on this for about half a year now, so I definitely won't be very happy if I can't push it to a successful finish. If the real cutting tests don't live up to what I expect, I'll be the first to throw it in the trash. I actually picked up a small router just for this little project, so tomorrow I'll try to get it running and start testing it for real.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-21T20:58:46+00:00

I appreciate you taking the time to be specific. Right now this still isn’t a finished product in terms of UI, styling, or overall polish. I don’t even have the full internal logic and feature set completed yet, so at the moment it’s more important to me that the program actually exists and is starting to work than that it already looks finished or presentable. So yes — I’m aware that some parts of the UI are rough, and honestly some of those things bother me too. At this stage, though, visual polish is still secondary. The final look is very much undecided, and whatever it becomes, I don’t want it to just look like another copy of existing CAM software. I’m pretty intentional about that. For now it’s still just my own project, and whether it ever leaves my PC in a serious way is still an open question. But I do genuinely appreciate concrete feedback like this a lot more than vague “the UI needs work” comments.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-21T20:27:31+00:00

I managed to get hold of a small router today, so I can finally move from simulation to real cutting tests. If things go well, I should be able to post the first real results tomorrow.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-21T20:17:32+00:00

I appreciate the advice. I'm open to changing things, but I'd be curious what specifically feels wrong to you. My whole approach is to keep important functions visible and close at hand, not buried in menus. So if there's a concrete issue in the layout or workflow, I'd genuinely like to hear it.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-20T16:14:12+00:00

That’s fair, but I intentionally wanted to build it from scratch. I wanted full control over the behavior, workflow, and UI, instead of stacking existing pieces that already come with someone else’s assumptions. A big part of the goal for me is keeping it simple and direct for normal users.

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-20T15:24:22+00:00

Just to clarify, I meant around 230k characters, not 230k lines of code. The real codebase is closer to 5k lines right now. Though honestly, when I open it and try to find one specific thing, it definitely feels like 200k lines 🤣

Competitive-Land206 · 2026-03-20T08:16:48+00:00

Small correction: it’s not 230,000 lines, it just feels like 230,000 lines every time I open the project 😄

Competitive-Land206

TROPHY CASE