Review of CAM Ops needed

[hppycmpr]

I am looking for someone to review my first set of manufacturing ops I developed in Fusion 360 and give me advice on any improvements. Specifically I am looking for someone who does CAD and CAM in Fusion 360, operates a CAMaster, and focuses on milling wood products. I am willing to pay for your services. I have attached an image of the work piece. The overall size is 9inx13in. Due to the small detail in the design, I have included bits in my ops ranging from 1/2 in to 1/64 in. I can send you a copy of the Fusion 360 file or provide you access to the file on my fusion cloud. thx




16x12_flash_scroll v21_render_cropped.jpg

[gtgmarine]

Just curious if you've been able to use the Fusion360 PP on your CAMaster to cut basic shapes and engrave letters, etc.

[hppycmpr]

I am new to CNC world and have never actually milled anything. I am still in the learning stage and I am evaluating whether to purchase a CAMaster system. I do not own a CNC system at this time. I have run my CAM Ops through the Autodesk "CAMaster with support for WinCNC and Yaskawa controls post processor", version 44072, dated Aug 8, 2023, but I have not run the resulting g-code through a CNC. I want someone with experience to analyze my toolpaths to ensure it is sound before asking anyone to run it on their CNC.

[gtgmarine]

Thanks for clarifying. I know there are forum members who use F360 but I don't so I can't help you.
BTW, if you plan to design and mill a lot of 2.5D parts like this on your CNC machine in the future, it's kind of overkill to use F360... IMHO.
VCarve Pro is provided with all CAMaster machines and is perfectly fine for this type of work.
Having said that, F360 is a vastly more capable CAD modeling tool than VCarve and Aspire but it's kind of like using a sledge hammer to kill a gnat ;-)

[hppycmpr]

Thanks for the advise Pete. I started my quest learning the CAD portion about 11 months ago. After evaluating VCarve Pro and Fusion 360, Fusion seemed to be a better match for how my mind works. It took a few more cycles to learn the Fusion 360 basics, when compared to VCarve, but it seems like it is more extensible. I kinda took the "buy your second machine first" mentality for software. I will continue to search out those in the forum who use Fusion 360 for CAD and CAM. My goal is to have someone mill out the first prototype in the next 2 months while I simultaneously work with that person to improve my Fusion 360 CAM skills. These two tasks may have to be separate tracks with different people. My initial intent was to do these together, but it is proving a little more challenging than I anticipated.

Doug
New to CNC
Evaluating CAMaster Systems but have not purchased yet

[gtgmarine]

I have a CAD background - I worked in the aerospace industry for almost 20 years. I supported, and wrote customizations for CAD/CAM packages like PTC ProEngineer (Parametric modeling), IBM Catia, and Unigraphics, etc.
F360 is awesome if you intend to model complex 3D parts that will be assembled with the requirement to check interferences and to run dynamic simulations, etc. The rendering is also super cool plus there are a lot of team collaboration features, etc., etc.
But, for a CNC router cutting 2.5D parts it really is overkill especially if you end up with a CAMaster CNC machine.

If you can figure out F360 you can easily start learning to use VCarve by simply watching a few tutorials and then creating some designs and cutting them out on your machine.
If you really want to do some 3D carving, you can upgrade from VCarve Pro to Aspire.
The thing about the Vectric software is that it was designed to be used for CNC routers.
Sure you can get an F360 CAM post processor to generate CAMaster toolpaths for a WINCNC or Yaskawa controller but you are going to be on the bleeding edge. Support might be sketchy and there will be far fewer people on this forum, for example, who can quickly help answer your questions.

If you want to become proficient with F360 because you need it for other types of 3D modeling and/or because it looks good on your resume, then definitely stick with it.

Just my $0.02 but good luck on whichever way you decide to go.

[hppycmpr]

thanks Pete for the advise. I have decided to give VCarve Pro another look. I will devote a solid month to it and see how productive I can be. Now that I have developed 100 models in Fusion360 I can try to build 10-15 of them in VCarve to really compare the two applications.

Doug
New to CNC
Evaluating CAMaster Systems but have not purchased ye

[Jim Becker]

Keep in mind you can use 3D models in VCP with no issue; you just can't create them. But the Vectric library has ribbons and other things that can help you with your work and VCP can "follow" the contour of the 3D element for things like text and other embellishments. If you use Vectric models, you can put a bunch of them in your file. If you use a third party 3D element or create one in another application, you can use one in your file. (Aspire has less limitations for that kind of thing and can create models, too)

[hppycmpr]

Thanks Jim. I will keep that in mind.