CNC Toolflow - What do you use?

Question

I recently assembled a Genmitsu CNC router and I'm trying to come up with an inexpensive or free toolflow. It seems like the best integrated free CAD/CAM tools are Fusion 360 and FreeCad. I haven't used either so there is a learning curve either way. I thought that I'd solicit input from those of you that have used these tools for CNC routing/milling. Which tool do you use and why? Are there other tool options that I should look at? I've seen some reviews but they seem to be for older versions of the products (seemed like the clear choice for a beginner a year ago was Fusion 360).

Fred27 · Answer

I ended up with CamBam. To be honest I can't remember why. There's a demo version and it's not too expensive - the sort of amount that I'm happy to pay to support development of a good product. I haven't seen any recent releases but to be honest I'm not sure it needs it.

CamBam CNC Software

fmilburn · Answer

I put a fair amount of effort into getting comfortable with Fusion 360 and then... As you point out they changed the GUI and for me it was unexpected. I opened it up the other day and suddenly it had changed. It took 15 minutes to figure out how to print the mesh body and output an existing model for 3D printing. Silly...

ralphjy · Answer

Fred27 ,

Thanks, I'll try out the demo version. I had my first experience with Fusion 360 last night and it was not pleasant. Sort of reminds me of Blender, until you spend a few days with the tool it is quite difficult to even do simple things. I was hopeful in that there are lots of tutorials on YouTube, but they apparently did an upgrade to their GUI framework that changes the location of many of the controls. Makes the tutorials painful to use.

With 3D printing it takes a while to develop really good prints, but it is very easy to start printing with reasonable quality. I guess there are too many tool variants in CNC to make setup simple. I wish there were more packaged examples that could be modified. Probably have not done enough searching. Maybe the CamBam examples will help.

genebren · Answer

Ralph,

Fusion360 is a struggle. I usually find that I work myself into a corner, where I am no longer able to proceed, and I either back way out or start over. There are things that I love about it, and at the same time, things I just can't understand.

I will be interested to hear about your progress on this journey as I am thinking about trying something very similar.

Best of luck!

Gene

CNC Toolflow - What do you use?

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