Mickey Sadler wrote in 010604 MMD about some shareware CAM
programs.  I have been playing with Kelly CAM: http://kellyware.com/
It does not do IGES surface modeling but will give a practical model.
Has a nice little viewer.

The pattern maker called me with the estimates on replicating the
castings.  I had to regretfully decline for the time being due to
the cost.  We chatted a bit about CADD/CAM; he said a fellow gave him
this link:  http://www.camodels.com/  Be careful when searching for
'cam' web sites.  Misspelling either of these will link to porn sites
<shudder>.

The pattern maker told me that most of the pattern work is now done in
Texas.  He then fixes them.  He did say that he would be willing to
help me make CAM models and would share the expansion factors and the
spill angles.

My friend Eric, who is kind enough to store my CNC, is a big LINUX fan.
Eventually we would like to figure out how to convert the machine from
DOS to LINUX.  It involves reverse engineering the parallel port.
Since the machine already has some brain dead G-code software, this
is not a big issue.

The real issue is getting the parts from which to make the models,
as well as finding the extra time to encode them.

Julie Porter