Is this compatible with those cheap China mini CNC with GRBL firmware v1.1F?

[HKPhysicist]

Hello Friends,
Thanks for this very nice software.

I have installed this on my Ubuntu 22.04 directly from their official repo. The GUI is very impressive.

I am new to CAD/CAM. So my questions are:

1. Is this software compatible with those cheap China mini CNC with GRBL firmware v1.1F?
2. I also find another CNC software Candle which GUI is simpler. Are the native file formats of BCNC and Candle interchangeable and compatible with each other?

Thanks for your attention. ^^

[Harvie]

Is this software compatible with those cheap China mini CNC with GBRL firmware v1.1F?

Always do flash your own firmware from original GRBL repository. Chinese units do come with GRBL that had random undocummented modifications done to it. While it might work at first, it often causes troubles down the road.

Are the native file formats of BCNC and Candle interchangeable and compatible with each other?

G-code is more or less compatible. bCNC stores metadata in comment lines, which might or might confuse some software, but it's OK mostly.

Unlike bCNC, Candle does not provide any CAM features, it's just g-code viewer/sender.

[Harvie]

Are you planning buying someting like this? Most cheap machines are very limited and you will only realize that as you start working with it. It really boils down to what kind of jobs you want to run. However if you just want to learn CNC, pretty much anything will do to get you comfortable with generating g-code, working with coordinate system, etc... But don't expect much more than very slowly cutting simple PCB projects or something like that from such a machine...

[Harvie]

On the other hand, you can just learn working with g-code using some simulators, eg.:
https://harvie.github.io/cnc-simulator/

[HKPhysicist]

Are you planning buying something like this? Most cheap machines are very limited and you will only realize that as you start working with it. It really boils down to what kind of jobs you want to run. However if you just want to learn CNC, pretty much anything will do to get you comfortable with generating g-code, working with coordinate system, etc... But don't expect much more than very slowly cutting simple PCB projects or something like that from such a machine...

Yes, I like that model. That is enough.
I just need it to drill several narrow (3mm width) slots and mill a shallow (0.1mm or less) logo on a plastic enclosure containing my electronic circuit board ^^

[HKPhysicist]

If it's really grbl, it's gonna work. If they claim it's grbl you have to trust them. However i reccomend learning to build and upload your firmware as soon as possible. BTW the electronic boards of these things are usualy pretty cheap and interchangable, so the worst case is you get a different one...

Yes, thanks for your opinion.
I also have experience in embedded programming. I have friends on AVR Freaks forum. I guess they can help me to upload firmware to the AVR MCU on board ^^

[Harvie]

Take a look at "3030 prover max" someone else discussed it here yesterday. It does cost 2x as much as the one you've chosen, but is 100x more useful. These two cannot even be compared.