ECabs and Shopbot

[Gary Campbell]

Bruce, Ken...
I know that myself and John Forney have a link being shipped as we speak, there may be others.
Gary

[itoolfred]

In a crazy sort of way I ran this this link a couple years ago :-). We have both the Thermwood and Shopbot routers which are both excellent machines. A couple years ago the THM was down for routine maintenance and they needed a part off an eCab job. We ran the nest on the THM, saved the mostly G-Code file to the bot. Ran the G-code converter and cut the part. Here is what I'll be very interested to see how it works that I did not see in documentation:
-how will it handle bit changes
-if a bit change is necessary, how will it handle the bit measure in the middle of the job file.

When I did the conversion manually, I went in and found all the bit change calls and manually inserted a pause and measure. Something I'm also interested in is the offsets. Thermwood has a concept of fence locations that Shopbot users may not be familiar with. It took me a while to get used to this, but now makes perfect sense (maybe they won't be in the link?).
I'm excited about this development and will be ordering the link myself very soon. The eCabs software has opened up a whole new world of business for me.
Fred

[dray]

WOOT...

Thats all I have to say

[ljdm]

Uninformed user asking possibly stupid question, but here goes anyway - if ecabs outputs g-code, and Sb converts them, what is the purpose of the 1200.00 unlock? Easy guys, with your answers, I already said I don't know squat about this subject. Just trying to learn.

[thewoodcrafter]

eCabinets generates a .TWD file that is NOT G code.
This file can only be read by a Thermwood controller. I think the controller will generate G code. But then you need a Thermwood CNC router to get the controller.
The ShopBot Link program will convert this .TWD file to ShopBot code and add a lot of intelligence to our machines.

[zeykr]

Lou,

Ecabs puts out a proprietary file that only the thermwoods could read up to now - not gcode.

[ljdm]

Got it........... reading a previous post, I assumed it meant it outputted g-code, now I understand.

[Gary Campbell]

Guys...
If you havnt looked at it yet, here is a link to the instruction manual for the ShopBot Link. http://www.ecabinetsystems.com/ecabi...opbot_link.htm

This Link, in conjunction with the eCabinets Software, will add machining features and parametric toolpath strategies far more advanced than those that have been available in the majority of commonly used design software.

Also, the Link does NOT output ShopBot Code as we know it. The output is encrypted, and our SB3 software has been modified to accept this.

These features have been designed to enhance the CNC ability of the both the small shop and large, with full coverage in between.

If you cut cabinets for a living, download the manual and take a look.
Gary