Hi, my name is Mike and I live in Devon recently retired from the software industry. Six weeks ago my wife bought me an Elegoo Arduino starter kit to keep me occupied during the Coronavirus lockdown. I made a few things using some Nema 17 stepper motors and then decided to make an XY plotter which went well. Now six weeks later I have a fully functioning CNC machine made out of plywood, softwood and some hardwood I had lying around. Of course I had to buy some rails SBR12 (ugh!) and some better stepper motor drivers TB6600 (?????) but apart from that most things I had lying around the workshop, including the Dremel I have attached. I have 4 Nema 17 (yes really) and they seem to drive the machine ok. I guess I have spent around £250 so far not counting the things I had lying around. I didn't sit down and design the machine I just made it up as I went along! My first piece of gcode was to cut a 20 tooth gear wheel (I sometimes mend old clocks and I'd like to use the machine to make the parts for a new build wooden clock). The accuracy of the gear wheel completely exceeded my expectations so I guess I'm now hooked. I'm treating this machine as a prototype so I'd like to learn as much as possible with this machine before scrapping it and starting again with some good spec items. Apologies if these questions have already been answered elsewhere but new forums can be a minefield for newbies like me.


The machine I have ended up with has a 1000mm x 600mm base giving me approx 800mm x 450mm build area with a 20mm depth.
I'm running GRBL on an Arduino with TB6600 stepper drivers and, as I say, 4 x Nema 17 motors.
I'm sending the gcode using Universal GCode Sender version 20200425 (latest nightly build downloaded a couple of weeks ago). I must say having spent a lifetime in the software industry as a computer programmer I'm extremely impressed with this program, its simple easy to use and works, for me, perfectly.
I have an aged Apple Mac that I'm using to run the software.
I'm using Inkskape to create some simple .svg files and I'm also gradually getting my head around FreeCad.

My biggest problem is getting a version of CAM software that works, I've tried MakerCam which seems temperamental and then I tried OpenBuilds CAM Gcode generator which on the face of it is good but very buggy. I also tried DXF2GCODE but couldn't get started with it.

So can anyone suggest a sensible CAM program to run on a MAC that would drive my set-up? Ultimately I guess FreeCAD is the way to go but there is a very steep learning curve there, which I am committed to in the long run.

Thanks in anticipation for any help.

PS. I'll post a picture of my build when I figure out how to do so