To CNC or not

Lowlysubaruguy

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May 21, 2016
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I have a little machine shop CNC mill, operating system is mach3

It was kind of a bonus in a retiring engineers machine shop that I bought everything, we literally took everything in his garage and swept the walls and floors when it was all loaded. The CNC mill was part of the purchase but I bought everything for a large mill, and lathe and a ton of tooling that I am really happy to have.

Im an auto technician not a computer geek by any means. Don’t get me wrong I own and run two auto shops and work with computers daily but I’ve never written any coding. Im probably quite capable of learning enough to perform most of the tasks I forsee in front of me however I’m pretty much ran ragged physically and mentally just keeping my shops in motion so I don’t see me sitting down for hours at a time learning to write codes to spin out a hand full of parts on my mill.

Are there programs for mach3 software that would help me make simple circles and squares. I seem to need precision holes in pieces a lot. Ive done a number of 1000 hole holes and whittled some nice squares with my big manual mill but doing so with a CNC mill sitting on a shelf makes my head hurt.

Reading some posts here a number of people have learned to write the needed programs only to find the effort isn’t worth the results for there needs. I think down the road five years or so I’ll make the time but right now it isn’t there. Thought maybe some one here can either point me in the right direction or guide me in the path of either selling it or boxing it up until time allows me to learn what’s needed to use it.

What’s really amusing to me is my wife has what is called a Cricut it’s basically a CNC crafting mill. She can take an image of something from almost anywhere and in few minutes have one printed and or cut out of almost anything that comes in sheets. Its a $300 crafting toy. It prints, cuts, scores while its basically two deminsional seeing it score paper for a folding edge tells me its operating on a three diminsional format much to the same needs of a CNC mill. We picked out a wicked looking fox from an image on line, ten minutes later she’s got a left and right facing one with three colors of ink dozens of complex highlighted areas scored and the entire fox cut out of decal material for my son. One would think there is a program for a mill to help me cut a circle or squares.

I hope I don’t come off to stupid or lazy looking for the easy way out. Im a realist I’ve got a nice tool without the knowledge to work it and not enough time on my hands to really learn complex coding. If there’s some simple solutions I’d love to try them. Thanks.
 
I have a small CNC mill and do not do any coding. But I learned AutoCad (I have TurboCad - a clone) a long time ago and VisualMill (CAM program) when I got my mill 6 years ago. Both are somewhat expensive. However you can replace both programs (a CAD program and a CAM program) with the single program - Fusion 360 (by AutoDesk) which is free to hobbiest and small business. But you need to learn Fusion 360, which seems to be really easy for some and quite difficult for others.

Either way you need to learn Mach3, which isn't all that hard. Included with Mach3 are some simple programs that can do what you are describing (circles, square holes. pattern holes, etc) without a CAD or CAM program. There are bunches of Mach3 tutorial videos (as well as tutorial videos for all other CAD and CAM programs). Learn just a little bit of GCode and you can use your CNC like a manual mill with a DRO.

I'm sure there will be a lot of other good ideas appearing here!
 
Two of my favorite softwares are Fusion 360, Full featured professional CAD/CAM software, free to hobbyists, students, and startups. A bit of a learning curve. The other is CamBam, liberal trial period, and only $150 if you decide to buy. Limited CAD capabilities, but excellent CAM, pretty easy to learn.
 
I bought and set up a small CNC mill several years ago and was fooled by all the model engineer forum content on hand coding into thinking I needed to learn to write G Code. CAD/CAM is still a fairly steep learning curve, choosing something with a supportive community forum will be a big help.
 
As others said, you don't need to code. If you learned your business accounting and inventory software, you can learn cad/cam. Some are pretty user friendly now days. Once you cut a part with a cnc mill, you'll be hooked! Manual is great and there are times it's easier to do something simple manually, but there are things you can do with cnc that you just can't with a manual mill. For those that can be accomplished manually, it's faster and easier with a cnc mill.
 
Mach 3 will do exactly what you want with simple holes, series of holes, etc. There is a tab called Wizzards in there and it takes you to it. No coding, simple to understand

Look at this youtube and search more for yourself:

 
CNC is fun, there's no doubt about that, On the other hand, Its really great for making 5,000 whatzits. If you're a hobbyist, you don't need that many.

I ran several CNC machines in my working life, really enjoyed it, but as a hobbyist, I dont' miss them.

Just so you know.
 
I have a Bridgeport mill with a 30+ year old Anilam Crusader II control (2-axis). The RS-232 port doesn't work so I can only program through the control box keypad (conversational programming). So, had to learn manual programming. It isn't too bad, but I'd love to be able to draw something in CAD and dump a CAM routine into my mill. Like mentioned above, learn Mach3 and download Fusion 360. Once you make a few parts, you'll be hooked and will be hard-pressed to do manual milling anymore. It will totally change the way you machine.

Bruce
 
CNC is fun, there's no doubt about that, On the other hand, Its really great for making 5,000 whatzits. If you're a hobbyist, you don't need that many.

I ran several CNC machines in my working life, really enjoyed it, but as a hobbyist, I dont' miss them.

Just so you know.

It depends on what you're going to do. If you're running complex shapes, CNC with a good CAM program is easier and sometimes the only reasonable way.

Think of cutting the shape of the green anodized parts of this paintball gun by hand, turning all three axes at once to get the shapes.
paintball_gun.jpg

Or carving plaques, names or other things.

walking-bears-3d-cnc-wood-carving-06.jpg

For things like these, CNC is the only way to go. (IMO, of course).
 
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