I spent some time today trying to get the rotary axis programmed up using GrblGru. I'm convinced it can work, but I have yet to make it happen. This is a frustrating program, it has a lot of potential but it is buggy, slow, and confusing. Still I will keep at it, for sure all the pieces are there and it can turn my rotary, I just can't work out how to make a 3D carve.
I have started looking in earnest for alternative programs that could work. For less than $400 I can find several, but trying to get something for free or a reasonably small fee is proving tricky. That is trying to spend as little on the software as I did on the hardware is tough. It is a real shame that Fusion360 has disabled support for there rotary axis in the non commercial license. They could have had a big impact on the small rotary machine market. LightBurns rotary support has had a measurable impact on the laser rotary community, it is a much more mature community with many options for hardware and software.
I have put together a google doc with my findings so far. If you know of any tools I have missed, feel free to drop me a note.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N2nNWQVzIz3wmb2btbQ4Dors2ToLn0SSubN6PVv-1Zo/edit?usp=sharing
Edit, it looks like FreeCAD has been working on rotary support and the latest release has made some progress. I'm going to take a hard look at this, if true then not only is this a good way to handle rotary support, it is a reasonable alternative to Fusion360 that is truly free and open source.
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