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I recall seeing a few posts ITT over the years asking for a decent place for endmills in Canadia. I needed a specific endmill for a super rush job and stumbled upon this place: https://www.sharptech-inc.com I was able to get it the next business day in the USA, and their selection looks non-horrible depending on your tooling situation.
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Dec 6, 2019 04:09
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Anyone have any good resources on Universal GCode sender? I've inherited as a volunteer position a Shapeoko 2 with an attached computer. It's a hackerspace, so I need to do some forensic work on whether the control board is even stock.
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Dec 24, 2019 06:11
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Thanks! That is all enormously helpful. Hopefully I'll be able to get some stuff going on it so folks can do some machinable wax mold masters or something on there.
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Dec 24, 2019 17:27
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It's been super slow going, BUT THE HACKERSPACE SHAPEOKO LIVES!!! Today was the first time I was really able to sit down and touch the machine for an extended period of time, but I have been researching the last week or so. Turns out, the biggest issue was the baud rate was not right on top of some combination of missing drivers, old firmware, and loose/dusty connections. But it's functional! Usability is a good way off. Something about the default grbl post processor in Fusion 360 mandates putting in an M06 code and Universal GCode Sender wicked hates that. On the plus side, though, it's like the first line and pretty much just means hitting "Play" twice. It also wants to bring the spindle way to the right side after ending the program. After reactivating the limit switches, it's more of a soft failure. Gonna have to figure that out. Mechanically, not bad. With some random 1/8" endmill in the drawer, I got 0.1mm variance over 50mm on the Y axis and 0.31mm over 50mm on the X axis. I think I'm just gonna call that good enough and probably substantially better than the shopbot the next room over. Since I'm still figuring it all out for training courses on it, I had to leave a little message to indicate that it's all on the up and up:  E: turns out we have the carcasses to two more benchtop machines, so hopefully we'll have an easy peasy Easel one for simple engraving, one for plastics & metals, and one for foams and woods. Since Fusion just added Eagle functionality, I'm hoping we can do some cool custom milled PCBs here! NewFatMike fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Feb 24, 2020 |
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Feb 24, 2020 04:11
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I wish I could help, I'm just jealous about your project.
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Mar 14, 2020 16:36
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Trying to get CNC approachable has been a really big challenge for me at my maker space. I think that's changing. I finally got to trying out Easel today, and oh man is it great. I think folks who understand how to use the laser engravers will really be able to bridge that gap. Even Vectric VCarve is a tough learner software coming in from nothing. Easel's accessibility is really nice, and it has the key feature: simulate tool paths. If someone in your life is struggling to figure out CAM, it's a great entry point. To attest, I imported a picture and converted it to an SVG to import to Easel and engrave: https://i.imgur.com/iN4l4pd.gifv
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Jun 29, 2020 07:02
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I know double posting is in poor taste, but it's been like a week so: Does anyone know of any pendants that are compatible with Easel? The X-Pendant is promising, but the fella who makes them is on a break right now, and considering the most recent review is from August 2019, I'm not really holding my breath.
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Jul 4, 2020 18:21
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This is super fun because an ENORMOUS part of industrial grade 3D printing is for tooling, jigs, and fixtures rather than finished products. Now, you may not necessarily need to keep stuff around that long or if you lose a tiny part of your fixture, you can just reprint it instead of digging out there old drawings to remake it. Could be anything from specialized soft jaws to a stopper for your sine plate. Making stuff friggin owns, and all the ways to skin the cat make it so much fun.
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Jul 6, 2020 17:57
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Bape Culture posted:I hope this is the correct thread to ask but if not could someone recommend me a thread please? I don't know what your budget is, but 3D Hubs might be able to help. I know some of the American team, they're p cool.
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Jul 7, 2020 18:37
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Yeah, this is for a maker space. I volunteer to maintain and educate our CNC machines. I'm splitting our education on the Shapeoko into a 2D CAD/CAM process with Inkscape/Illustrator/AutoCAD + Easel and a 3D CAD/CAM process that's good for Fusion and Solidworks. It's all in an effort to get more folks using our Tormach PCNC 1100 (so I can fix it more frequently, I guess). Minimizing the number of things you have to learn as you go up each machine (Shapeoko/X-Carve, ShopBot, then Tormach) is nice, hence the desire for pendants.
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Jul 19, 2020 23:06
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The maker space fully owns and I count myself exceedingly lucky to have a long leash and a budget to gently caress around and teach people all this neat stuff! I love the Tormach folks fwiw - they're employee owned and hanging out with them at Fabtech is so fun. A used Haas will definitely have a better feature set, though.
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Jul 20, 2020 02:10
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I'm with Pumping Station: One in Chicago. I'm somewhat newly minted as an "area host" - a volunteer who maintains equipment and educates/authorizes membership on how to use them effectively and safely. Currently you need to be authorized for cold metals, a knee mill, and half of the ShopBot to even meet the prerequisites. That's about 9 hours of authorizations on its own AND that doesn't include CAD or CAM. It's an enormous burden on the membership. I think out of 450 members or so we've got under a dozen authorized to actually use it. We're transitioning to an e-learning platform for a lot of our knowledge base and to standardize the authorization process across disparate areas and volunteers. I've started drafting out some courses and the path I'm aiming for is: * 2D CAD & CAM > Lasers and Shapeoko * 3D CAD & CAM > Shapeoko Part 2, includes tool changes * ShopBot * Cold Metals * Tormach It is a *lot* of training, but it's spread out in an ordered way that makes a lot of sense. It's also broken up and largely self paced. Now you get to learn about the machine in person instead of an unpaid volunteer drone for 3 hours about the machine and whatever someone asked about Fusion.
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Jul 20, 2020 03:28
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Yeah, it's kinda weird if you're coming from something feature based. Your part design is automatically in an assembly space, so it's usually best practice to create a new component right away and activate it (select the radio button next to the component name). Each component gets its own color in the feature timeline on the bottom. You can move a body into a new component, but its history will be shared with the old component, hence the above tip. Sketched and bodies IIRC are the only things that you can select from the component tree on the left. Fusion does run locally, I believe its primary cloud functions are for PDM, simulation, rendering, asset pulldowns, and things like that. Might want to check the graphics options to see what driver it's using (DX9 and DX11 I believe are the options). Could also be worth checking the graphics control panel to make sure that it's getting hardware acceleration.
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Aug 15, 2020 05:24
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Yeah, absolutely! The biggest reason is because you can start a new project or file off of a component. Having a design history for a component that is not all in-context modeling is pretty big (although you may have to do some edits for things like projecting off geometry from other sketches or bodies). It's not necessarily as robust as like a SOLIDWORKS part library, but if you've done a ton of work on something that's going to be used or similar to something for other projects, it's wicked helpful. For an example, if you're doing mold design, it's one thing to design the mold itself but everything that hooks up to your machine needs to be modeled as well. It's really helpful if you can pull down some independently modeled brackets or alignment features before designing your gates and runners so you can be certain about placement. If it's your first time modeling for that machine, you want to design those location and alignment features in-situ but as a separate component + subcomponents so you can make a separate file out of that top-level component (which contains subcomponents of the multiple bodies). I hope that makes sense, it gets a little messy just with words. I think this link might help illustrate: https://designandmotion.net/new-post/when-to-use-fusion-360-bodies-and-components/ The other thing is a usability issue. If you have a single component with several bodies in it and you need to edit one of them, it can get tricky to track down which feature applies because they're all indicated with the same color on the timeline. I used Fusion 360 professionally for a few years freelancing and kinda had to learn all this on the fly - I have a few projects that would have gone MUCH more smoothly had I known this.
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Aug 15, 2020 15:13
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Qubee posted:Can you locally export entire assemblies? I've been watching a tonne of videos, I really think making the jump to 360 is going to give me a much better workflow compared to Creo, which is heavily catered towards old timey draughters and stuff. It just seems heaps more intuitive and friendly. You can, I believe all you have to do is right click a component and insert it into a new project. I don't recall if you can directly insert from one assembly into another assembly without turning the component into its own project file. Got free Educational SOLIDWORKS Premium for my makerspace, woohoo! Now all I have to do is make some tool cribs/libraries for our ShopBot, Shapeoko, and Tormach in Fusion 360 and SWX 
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Aug 20, 2020 16:18
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The general application is here: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9a3e7d55200c4170934a446c29c16da4?Type=Maker I work for a VAR, so I was able to reach out directly to the educational folks. If you don't hear anything back, I'd be happy to work with you over DMs for it 
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Aug 20, 2020 16:49
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This son of a gun has been killing me all weekend: I was originally just going to reinforce the fiberglass dust collection duct with some epo There were some issues with the control computer running slow and well  So we've got an SSD in there now, upgraded it to Windows 10, replaced a ????? hacked solution for an RS485-USB interface, and in jostling it all around, the second x axis stepper got stupid. 16 hours of troubleshooting and maintenance this weekend.
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Aug 24, 2020 00:40
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Fusion 360 caught a serious nerf effective October 1st. You can't export STEP files anymore and you can only post single tool CAM paths on top of some other ridiculous garbage. I'm just doing that thing where I remind you the EAA has Educational Solidworks Premium licenses for $40/year. It comes with good CAM features and everything, same noncommercial addendum.
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Sep 17, 2020 04:27
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ante posted:Apparently you can't get educational SW files into pro SW packages though, the file is permanently tainted Yeah, everything gets watermarked. You can still open the files in professional versions, but the person opening it will know it was made in an educational version. I just wanted to make sure nobody with/access to a Tormach or something was going to get shut out in the cold. My makerspace is going bananas about it. Qubee posted:The exporting STEP files doesn't really affect me (are there scenarios where this would be useful for a hobbyist? I can imagine it would be a pain in the rear end when it comes to showing clients work, but not much in the way of it being an issue for hobbyists), but what does the single tool CAM paths thing mean? I've used STEP files for collaboration with folks on other software, especially stuff like Rhino or OnShape. Autodesk is apparently going to be preventing CAM posts from including ATC tool changes. Something that really grinds my gears are that drawings are single sheet only, you can only have 10 projects at a time, and each drawing page will then count as a separate project.
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Sep 17, 2020 04:54
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sharkytm posted:And the educational version isn't an option, everyone talks up the EAA deal, but if you use it for commercial work and get caught, Dassault will fine you to the moon and back. I've seen it happen. That is true. Also, I'm in the hobby CNC thread talking about a replacement for a personal use license. If you're doing commercial stuff you should be in a commercial CNC thread and use commercial software.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:21
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E: I've just got my own personal nightmare Autodesk stories and I'm baffled by this decision.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:48
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Oh rad! I had no idea about Solid Edge Community Edition, that seems pretty neato. A lot of places have SOLIDWORKS Educational of one variety or another, I wish there was an easier way to get a directory of who has one so you can join a community spot or even head to your local library for instructions.
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Sep 20, 2020 18:48
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Qubee posted:I've used SolidWorks extensively, it's pretty rear end compared to Fusion 360. It was a running joke throughout our 3 year uni course that if it didn't crash on you at least three times in a two hour period, you were using it wrong. Just a heads up for people wanting to get into it. Jesus Christ. FWIW, that's nothing like my experience with it and I'm using way off spec hardware. If y'all are having issues, I'm happy to help troubleshoot. I'm on the tech support desk for it for a month anyway 
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Sep 21, 2020 15:20
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Sagebrush posted:For instance, one of my favorites is that the equation editor won't accept a user-defined global variable called "thickness." If you try it, it will accept the name just fine, but when you try to assign a value it says "the equation is invalid." This is not to forgive this but lmao I actually know this one: it's because thickness is a reserved variable for sheet metal. It does suck that Dassault expects everyone to get their (also very expensive) training. Rhino does own bones. I'm really, really glad I bought a license to it before the other CAD programs because "Swiss Army Knife" is right. It'll eat up and spit out just about anything. I should actually get brushed back up on it.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:17
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Not necessarily "wrong" Probably the hardest thing to do with SWX is get the muscle memory down. If you do something and DO NOT move your mouse, a pretty good set of shortcuts show up. They're workspace dependent (e.g. surfaces vs sketch vs features) but they're really good. The S key will also do two things: 1) activate an in context shortcut menu for what SWX guesses you want to do next AND 2) brings a cursor up in the "search" toolbar in the upper right. You can start typing what you want to do and I'll come up. I used to do a lot of Rhino and Fusion just by typing commands, so maybe that'll help.
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Sep 22, 2020 23:38
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CorelCAD is $30 on the Humble Bundle. Windows and macOS compatible. No CAM plugin solution AFAIK, but if you're in the cold on macOS after Fusion's changes, it's worth having just as insurance. I picked it up myself. I haven't used it, but I've worked with mass producers who do, so it's capable.
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Oct 3, 2020 22:13
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I never tried it, but I had heard the Mac version of Fusion 360 was more there to tick a marketing box than be actually useful, sorry friend 
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Oct 22, 2020 04:59
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It has been extremely heartwarming to see everyone helping out with CAD learning 
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Oct 23, 2020 15:01
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I think I must be misunderstanding, but if you just change stock thickness on the same model, it'll regenerate your tool paths. If you have different sized X-Y dimensions on your stock, things may get a little hairy. If you *really* wanted the design to automatically end up in, say, the center of your board. I've never milled OSB, so I don't know if there's some trick to it, but I've milled MDF and plywood at the same feeds and speeds (different models, though) and sandpaper is your friend with plywood anyway. Also, please wear a ventilator when milling MDF. It's pretty much made of sawdust and poison.
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Nov 5, 2020 13:37
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I've been doing a little exploring in trying to get SOLIDWORKS to work with our Universal Lasers at the makerspace. Looks like you just print directly from Drawings after setting your page size to be the size of the print bed. Change your lines and fill for vector and raster and that seems like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds_wfMboWNk Anyone had any hands on experience before I go at it this weekend?
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Dec 17, 2020 15:58
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Double posting because it's been a few days: Laser cutting on a Universal straight from SOLIDWORKS Drawings could not have been any easier. I need to do some template work, but it really is just as simple as getting your lines thin, the correct color, and hitting the print button. Edu is what we have at the space despite making my test file on a commercial license. It rastered out the watermark :v  
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Dec 20, 2020 04:24
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That's super neat! I almost shared it to my maker space but no way in hell am I inspiring anyone to put wood in our Tormach.
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Dec 23, 2020 15:05
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Anyone have a preferred chipload/feeds and speeds calculator? I was eyeing FSWizard Pro, but it looks like its recommendations are based on having a machine that's completely cast iron and the size of a schoolbus. I can work with that, but even a calculator aiming at "light duty" machines like a Tormach would be a delight. Taig folks have a favorite?
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Dec 30, 2020 01:42
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Thanks to both of y'all! I think we have a GWizard license with our Tormach at the space, so I'll poke around in there as well as Machining Advisor Pro.
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Dec 30, 2020 17:56
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Are most of those 3018/Sainsmart routers for PCBs and engraving already finished wood/plastic rather than cheaper ShapeOkos?
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Jan 5, 2021 19:21
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Assuming you want a fully-fledged cnc mill that can handle engineering materials/metals- you need a higher budget, significantly higher when you remember that tooling and fixtures will tack a couple hundred at minimum to the mill price. I wouldn't say you need to spend Tormach-tier money, there's always Taig and Sherline machines, but we're still talking "one to several thousand dollars" all in. I have a CNCed Taig micro mill and I think it's run me about $3k canadian since I first picked it up. What lasers are you thinking around that price range? Are K40s no longer expensive firestarters?
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Jan 14, 2021 21:48
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If y'all have some models to link, I'd love to take a look. I realized I could plot directly from SOLIDWORKS Drawings to Universal lasers and I'd love to catch that high on a small home machine.
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Jan 16, 2021 15:25
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There was a brief, beautiful moment where I thought the price was $420.69 instead of $420.62  Thanks very much! I imagine things get less hinky around the $1k mark?
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Jan 16, 2021 17:03
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Thanks friends! I've never really looked into home lasers, and the 50W ones look a little more my speed if I feel the need to grab one for home. My first home shop CNC pickup will hopefully be a Taig lathe - that'll do nicely with the Tormach and ShapeOkos at the makerspace.
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Jan 18, 2021 03:58
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 17:10 |
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I think I've asked before, but does anyone have any preferred shuttles or pendants? I think the Contour Design one is rather popular, but I'd love to have one I didn't have to label https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/697104-REG/Contour_SXPRB_Shuttle_Xpress_NLE_Multimedia_Controller.html
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Jan 23, 2021 20:22
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