CNC has always tickled my fancy… can’t one get more detail by producing a STL file and then routering…
Ziggy
Okay So i’ve asked the same question in another forum but came across this in my research.
My company is wanting to implemet Zbrush for sculpting but we need to get the polys to a CNC machine. The problem is it looks like CNC machines don’t work with polygons. So how do you huys get you polygon models to a CNC machine? As far as I can tell the only way is to us Rhino to convert the data and then send it along to a CNC machine. If you guys could shed some light on this for me it would be hugley appreciated.
CNC machines (other than 3D printers) will never work directly with polygons. 3D data is manipulated within the cad program. Tools are chosen, toolpath strategies applied, simulated, and gcode is output from that cam program. One way to achieve this is using rhino, and the rhinocam plugin. Another is using visualmill. Yet another is using mastercam (high dollar). Another is GibsCam. Another is Alibre… etc.
Once in the Cad/cam program, the model/meshes can be scaled to whatever size you want, or to fit a piece of stock you have laying around.
With said Cad / Cam program, any file can be imported. Rhino works well with STL’s, IGS’s, and OBJ files. Further, my cam program (rhinocam) converts all nurbs into meshes before applying the toolpath strategy. Therefore, ZBrush meshes are perfect. Big files can slow it down a bit, though.
Hope this helps.
This part of your Post is missleading at least.
3D-Printers also do not work on the Polygons direcly but instead need 2D-Section-Data generated from polygonal input.
But one can feed in Polygons and that’s what’s important.
While a lot of CAM-Programs do not support meshes as input but only want Nurbs - some of them do.
Rhino does not do anything to the mesh exported from Zbrush in order to make it suitable for milling!
It is just the Host for RhinoCam. Apart from RhinoCam there’s also quite a few standalone products.
Some CAM-packages are even specialized on working with meshes, they import a variety of formats, also
.obj exported from Zbrush. So one can feed in Polygons directly here. Some Brands are MeshCam, Deskproto, Mayka…
To my knowledge all CAM-Programs convert non-meshes to mesh-data for Toolpath-Generation.
With the Nurbs Model as a reference however they can do this within Tolerances from truly smooth Surface-Data.
The latter may play a role when manufacturing cars but certainly not when creating Carot-Reliefs. 