CAD software and upcoming mill purchase

GunsOfNavarone

GunsOfNavarone

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Thanks to some short conversations with Shooter12345... I THINK I know what mill I will be purchasing. After watching his self made CNC in action, I KNOW I want this. Let's say I but my mill, add the hardware for CNC, what about software? I assume there are many options and I know from my personal music and Adobe related past, software can be VERY expensive. To start out,
what is the most affordable software AND
how difficult is it to use? Do I need a college degree in the maths to run it?
I could be happy with "just" a mill, but I don't want to go down the CNC path just to find * I are tWo stoopid * to figure how how to successfully use it (accurately)
Thanks as usual guys (and girls?)
 
I would try out Fusion 360, it's free to hobbyists. A full professional CAD/CAM package. A bit of a learning curve, but there are a lot of instructional videos online.
 
It appears to be a free trial, perhaps a "subscription" after that? I guess I'd prefer to outright purchase but I'd like it the easiest design interface, a sort of, what you see is what you get. Maybe there is somewhere else besides the manufacturer's website to dowload?
 
No, it's really free with no subscription requirement. You can register as a hobbyist later during the trial period.
 
Just watched an hour of tutorials from Lars Christensen. I think that will be a good choice of software! Look pretty friendly just need to find a good pc for the garage (I have no idea what's needed for this software not to mention powering this CNC mill...that will be down the road (6months maybe?) Thanks much!
 
so what Mill... feeling like the shunned on the Mill part of this haha (or did I miss it)? :-0
 
GunsOfNavarone said:
Just watched an hour of tutorials from Lars Christensen. I think that will be a good choice of software! Look pretty friendly just need to find a good pc for the garage (I have no idea what's needed for this software not to mention powering this CNC mill...that will be down the road (6months maybe?) Thanks much!
Click to expand...
Glad I could inspire you :)

First thing is that you might want to use different computers for CAD/CAM and controlling the machine. 3D modeling tends to work best with the newer and faster computers (I don't mean the latest and greatest, but a 10 year old desktop with 2 gigs of memory won't cut it) while controlling the machine doesn't require much computing at all. I am about to replace my control computer with an 11 year old desktop from my office. It giving me good numbers on latency and should be a solid step up from the one I got off craigslist for $40 that it uses now.

One other thing you will need to consider is what software you would use to control the machine. Linuxcnc and Mach4 are some of the most popular. Linuxcnc is free (and its what I use) while Mach4 is $200. For me, linuxcnc is a no brainer, but a lot of people like Mach.

For reference, I use an HP Envy M6 with an i7 and 16 gb of RAM for modeling.
 
Cad software will not run the machine itself, you will need motion control software for this.
Cad will make the drawings, Cam will turn the drawings into code that the Motion control will use to operate the machine drives.

Making a cad/cam drawing in F360 will not generate the signals required to drive the tool itself as far as I can tell. It appears that Mach 3 will actually communicate with the drive controllers and execute the input GCode, I may be wrong as I have never used a Mach 3 machine.

However many companies make controllers that will run the machine from code generated elsewhere.

Fanuc, Siemans, Yaskawa, Mazatrol, GE and others come to mind, Fanuc being the most common as it is used by Haas, Hardinge and others.
 
P. Waller said:
Making a cad/cam drawing in F360 will not generate the signals required to drive the tool itself as far as I can tell. It appears that Mach 3 will actually communicate with the drive controllers and execute the input GCode, I may be wrong as I have never used a Mach 3 machine.
Click to expand...
You are correct here. Mach 3 controls the machine based on the G code program it is given.
 
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