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NewFatMike posted:I believe it should? Activate the top level/document level component and you should be able to do sketched features. Fusion has a hole wizard for sure
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Oct 14, 2021 17:31
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I did some freelance CNC programming work this morning where I use my own copy of Fusion360, and then did my normal day job of CNC programming at work where we use MasterCAM and hoo boy experiencing them back-to-back really puts into stark releif how good Fusion's CAM is and how loving poo poo MasterCAM is.
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Oct 19, 2021 02:07
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I'm going to have to find time to gently caress around with Fusion360 and give it a shot because I have a hard time believing this. Just one (common) example: Lets say you're making a part with 5 different hole sizes, at varying heights on the part and you want to put a .001" chamfer/edge break on all the holes. In MasterCAM (we're still on 2019 here, it may be better in the new version) you select all the holes of one specific size, go to the linking parameters tab, set the depth to incremental, go to another window to enter in the desired diameter of the chamfer you want (and you have to remember what the size of the hole you selected was here, and do the math to add on whatever chamfer diameter you want) and then finish the toolpath. Now repeat this for the 4 other hole sizes, making sure you remember the diameters of the holes as you go. In Fusion360 you select all the holes, and in the depths tab on the toolpath you set the drill depth to "chamfer width" and type .001" into the box. Finished. Another example: You're making a plain rear end prismatic part (90% of what I do, I'm a prototype / R&D machinist at a medical device company) that will be done in 2 operations: top and then bottom. You program the top of the part all nice and then go to do the bottom. In fusion you make another setup and set up your workplane orientation and location for side B. Since you have side A all programmed and tools set up for it, you decide you want to use the same tools and toolpath paramters to say, face side B. You select the facing toolpath from side A and drag and drop it into the side B setup list (holding ctrl) and it's copy-pasted and has the side B Workplane applied to it, but all the stepovers and depths and tool settings are the same. Furthermore, in Fusion you can have multiple windows with different parts open, and you can easily copy-paste tools, toolpaths, sketches, etc from one window to the other and the pasted toolpaths will behave correctly and have the proper (new) workplanes applied to themselves. You can also select tools created in one part for use in another part, so if you're doing 4 or 5 parts in one day, you can keep using the same tools you setup and not have to remember their sizes/settings/Tool#'s in the machine etc. If you do this in MasterCAM you can either: copy - paste the toolpath from toolpath group A into toolpath Group B, but the operation will still have the same workplanes from A, and to change them to group B you have to go into the toolpath setting and change it in 3 separate places (The WCS plane, the Tool Plane, and the Comp/Construction plane). The other choice is to import the toolpath (FROM THE SAME FILE INTO ITSELF????) but you have to navigate through the import toolpath interface which requires you to navigate through an explorer window to find the file you're working on, and then remember to have the proper workplane settings clicked in the import window) If you want multiple parts open in MasterCAM, you have to have multiple instances of MasterCAM open, and you can't copy-paste between them! Another thing that is very easy/logical in Fusion but requires a ton of work in MasterCAM: Changing the workplane origin on a setup that has been programmed already. All of the toolpaths in Fusion default to associative and the depths are (usually) set relative to either the stock, the model top/bottom, or the selected feature (you can set up absolute height references if you want). Move the workplane origin to wherever you want, hit re-generate, and all your heights will be perfect. In MC setting up linking parameters to associative to geometry takes a ton of clicks, so I mostly leave it on absolute coordinates, so all my heights are wrong if I ever have to change the location of the workplane (i.e. if I decide to change the size of the stock I'm going to make the part out of) Also: Why are there 2 or 3 different interfaces for the different types of 3D surface toolpaths in MC? (contour / flowline / etc) (I know the reason why: They developed the different toolpaths at different points of time and never went back and re-did the interfaces to all be consistent) Overall MasterCAM is really showing it's age and you can really tell when new stuff has been tacked on without going back and updating the old stuff. Fusion is developed by a large, modern software company that puts some effort into it's UI/UX and it shows. They also have a newer user-base with less entrenched ways of working, and Autodesk seems more willing to just fully overhaul things because it is better. MasterCAM seems like it was designed with a shotgun, and it feels like they cater to their userbase by leaving every old legacy thing in there, so at this point it's just junk built on top of junk built on top of other junk. Maybe the 2021 version of MC is better, I will have to download the demo to play around at home, but Fusion's workflow really has me spoiled. tylertfb fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 16:34
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shame on an IGA posted:is master cam still surfaces-only because that drove me up a drat wall in 2010 2019 will let you program on Solids but it feels very tacked on, not like Fusion which is built from the ground up around solids.
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Oct 19, 2021 17:13
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biracial bear for uncut posted:
I've always been a soloist in the shop, so I haven't delved too deep into setup sheets but I do remember messing with it a couple of years ago. It's probably much changed now, I'll check it out and report back. I've never touched the setup sheet functionality of MasterCAM. I also labored under that CAM that shall not be named you were posting about earlier, and I get what they're going for with the Feature-based machining, but I felt it wasn't quite ready for prime-time for my use case (Rapid turn around of one-off parts) and took too much time for the initial customization of the library (tools / operations / materials) , and then I still needed to take too much time massaging the results afterward. Fusion really just has the right balance of correct behavior out of the box + ease of customization of library that it is just very fast, precise, and easy for me to use now. Again, my use case for CAM is making and modifying parts that go onto other assemblies (production line machinery mostly, adapter plates, robot end-of-tool gripper fingers, etc etc) in a very very rapid time-frame and in small (usually one!) quantities. A production shop probably has different needs, but I can't see how F360 would lack there either.
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Oct 19, 2021 19:19
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Hadlock posted:If I want to design say, an ant whose legs are cheap electronic servos that have 150° range of motion, can I model this motion in fusion 360 or do I need to upgrade to a package like solidworks The joint / linkage stuff is do-able for sure. You can turn on the 'contact all' setting, and every body will be treated as a contact set and stop any joint movement on an intersection. It can be kind of computationaly intensive, so it's best to turn it on to find the limits for individual pieces and then set the joints to those numbers, and then turn it off again for more modeling. You can also just define two specific components as contact sets and it will calculate the collisions between the two and ignore all other components.
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Nov 9, 2021 01:37
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tylertfb posted:The joint / linkage stuff is do-able for sure. You can turn on the 'contact all' setting, and every body will be treated as a contact set and stop any joint movement on an intersection. It can be kind of computationaly intensive, so it's best to turn it on to find the limits for individual pieces and then set the joints to those numbers, and then turn it off again for more modeling. You can also just define two specific components as contact sets and it will calculate the collisions between the two and ignore all other components. Here is a real quick digi-ant I drew. The left side legs all have angle limits set on their joints. The right half legs have the three legs set as a contact set. If you turn contact checking on, the three components will check for contact vs each other. I also put a motion link between the joint of the head/body and the abdomen/body, so if you move one, the other moves the reverse angle. https://a360.co/3kjnBfd You can't mess with the joints in the web viewer but I set this model to be freely downloadable and you can check it there. This is also a good demonstration of (IMO) proper component hierarchy. Maybe I put some of the joints in the wrong components...
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Nov 9, 2021 09:25
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A Proper Uppercut posted:This is just a pretty basic one- I made a mockup of this on Solidworks (that I use here at work) and making a rough prism (4" x 3" x 1" as a guess) and then making sketches on the two faces is simple enough. Then you can save as DXF, and chose which sketch you want output by changing the visibiltiy of sketches (all the sketches you don't want output set to invisible...) At home, I use Fusion 360 and it's even easier. You can just right-click a sketch in the feature tree and there is an option to save to DXF. I think you can even make it so that geometry marked as construction geo won't be output. I'll check it later today when I get home. Fusion even has Wire in the CAM part of the program but I've never touched it, and suspect it's probably on the simple side these days. Lots and lots of people use F3D to output DXF stuff for laser / waterjet though, so that part of it is quite robust.
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Jan 13, 2022 20:58
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If you’re a student the Fusion liscense is free for 3 years (even if it’s been a few years you can usually swing the liscense) and IMO the fusion CAM kicks serous rear end (I’m a prototype programmer and machinist at a medical device company for work. We do not use fusion but I wish we did)
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Feb 21, 2022 18:46
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It’s been in the back of my mind for years to start offering my services writing custom posts, ever since interacting with the guy we had writing powermill posts for us at a medical device company I worked for. He was super cool and got to work from home and ended up filling me in on how he did everything. After that I’ve gone in and did custom work on all the posts used where I work when necessary. Would be a nice little side gig. All these recent posts are putting that thought back in my mind.
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Mar 17, 2022 16:26
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Reading Practical Machinist forums really gave me insight as to why Mastercam is the way that it is .
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Mar 17, 2022 17:31
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Do you mean translate part features to like controller canned cycles? Yeah that is possible to do via mastercam c hooks + post editing for instance. Powermill’s (now an autodesk product but was Delcam when I used it heavily) scripting capabilities will let you do this also. When fusion opens up the API access to the manufacturing space it’ll be possible also. Just depends on what the controller supports. Although: the whole point of canned cycles/conversational programming is to allow you to do stuff at the controller, without touching the CAM, so if you have the CAM computer available, I don’t see what you gain by not just making programs to do bolt holes or whatever the regular way. Sure if you’re making the same holes you can make a spot/drill/chamfer/tap template or feature recognization thing (what does camworks call it again?) to help you program stuff faster/more uniformly, but I don’t see why not to just post it the standard way at that point. tylertfb fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 21:23
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NewFatMike posted:Oh that’s pretty cool, even if bothersome. ShopBot motion control systems are awful for any CAD system to work with. I’m trying to figure out a good 4’ X 8’ CNC router for a future makerspace that actually uses GCode and I’m haunted by it. At the very beginning of my CNC career I worked in a place that shaped surfboards on a custom cnc router made by the people that became this: https://dmscncrouters.com/product-lines/freedom/freedom-8/ It's a nice USA made machine with very servicable and simple Fagor controls. No big bells and whistles, but just works, and is easy to service. There are probably tons of used ones knocking around.
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Mar 18, 2022 23:33
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Re : surfboard router. I just remembered this commercial Dell did at our shop. I’m the dude in the grey sweater with stripes faking like I’m working on these computers: https://youtu.be/Iqr9oaHZUKg
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Mar 19, 2022 06:43
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Hell yes. We’re getting our vf2 with the trt rotary axis on Thursday and I have a stack of 5th axis vises ready to mount up to it. We’re 100% prototypes in our shop though, so I never get to actually optimize a toolpath/setup for 100% efficiency.
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Nov 4, 2022 04:51
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bred posted:I'm getting by with The Ultimate GD&T Pocket Guide by Alex Krulikowski and a GD&T Basics pdf printout on my wall. I google searched the pdf instead of signing up for https://www.gdandtbasics.com. Have the pocket guide on my desk, took the 3 day seminar a few years ago. Worth it imo.
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Nov 16, 2022 02:08
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His Divine Shadow posted:Making an end grain cutting board, it's one component made up of lots of bodies. I basically made one piece of the board, then used a rectangular pattern to make the rest. Fusion made them all look like the cross section of a single tree, which was weird looking. If it's for a graphics / inside the computer / visualization thing, Fusion is really not the program for it (even if it DOES have rendering and texturing capabilities). I'm not a graphics guy, so I'm not familiar with the available products but you'd probably be better served with one of those. I know our visualization / graphics guy at my old job where we integrated robots into assembly lines did everything in blender. Probably way more robust texture manipulation in there. If it's designing for real life, yeah using joints to control orientation of components is the proper way of doing it.
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Nov 19, 2022 21:45
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NewFatMike posted:I’ve been kinda lightly following this, it looks pretty neat! I’m curious how different CAM software will handle it as there’s often a meshing step. “Tolerance on this feature is: sure”
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Feb 20, 2023 05:07
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They could solve 99% of user complaints on the online solidworks and fusion forums/groups/Facebook clubs with an AI plugin that said: “it looks like you’re trying to do artistic work. Please use a different software, thank you.” And then force-closed the program.
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Feb 20, 2023 17:36
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I came into the trade in a really roundabout way and worked by myself, self taught for about 15 years. When I went to a company where I’d be working other, experienced, people, I was really intimidated at being found out for lacking skills/training. That feeling lasted about a week. It’s wild how bad at the computer (the easiest part of the job!) a lot of these people are.
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Jul 7, 2023 16:54
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From the perspective of someone who is a CNC Programmer as my profession: Fusion CAM is really really loving good. They really made the UI nice, and making macros, templates, and tool libraries is easy and flows smoothly, so repeat tasks are really simple to ‘automate’. I use MasterCAM at my real job, and while it gets the job done, it’s basically actively user hostile. The licensing and etc of it sucks major rear end, and it’s expensive as hell (not that it matters to me, company is paying). I’m glad that I know how to use it, as it is the industry standard, but I feel so much more relaxed when I go back to Fusion to do side/freelance work.
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Jul 14, 2023 16:43
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I swear, about 70% of the problems people post about on the Facebook fusion groups are related to fonts.
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Jul 26, 2023 18:05
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DreadLlama posted:Could someone please tell me the technical name of what I'm trying to do so I can find a youtube tutorial on how to do it? To be honest, working from .stl files like these is the recipe for a bad time. If I was doing this, I'd use the models you have as a template to re-model the thing using proper parametric solid modeling techniques. Those parts are simple enough that it would be pretty quick (once you know the tools). The way I would approach this would be to make a sketch on the bottom plane of that assembly (oh yeah before I forget to mention: MAKE A NEW COMPONENT before you start sketching, and if you can, put each .stl in it's own component. Fusion works 100% better once you map out the structure of your assembly using components BEFORE you start doing heavy work) and draw a rectangle for the outline of the green part, and then circles where those holes on the pink part are. Then you can fill in the rest of the outline how you want and extrude up to whatever height you want. Then make a sketch on the top of that solid and draw the inner rectangle of the green part and use it to cut down. Then cut the top faces of the pink part down to the level you want...etc etc etc. You can mess around with the convert mesh to solid tools (and these parts you have here are probably good candidates for that) but that's a crapshoot at best. in short: Thingverse is evil, avoid.
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Oct 5, 2023 05:08
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NomNomNom posted:I'm stinking mad about svg files. I’m sure you tried this, but just to sanity check: is the scale factor 2.54? (I.e. inch to cm, rather than mm)
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Oct 6, 2023 00:16
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:Hole of the tap drill size and a call-out for thread size and spec. Don't draw the threads. Speaking as a machinist: this ^ Drawn threads are the worst. Don’t draw in the edge breaks either.
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Oct 10, 2023 23:50
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Maybe the sword is only meant to be drawn by the rightful ruler of Albion. I don’t see how Solidworks will help you with that.
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Dec 13, 2023 15:26
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I’m pretty shocked that line just casually got dropped with very little reaction.
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Dec 25, 2023 15:32
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In order of importance: Verniers Smooth flat surface 1-2-3 block (or two) V-blocks Gauge pin set That gets you measuring most small parts. I’d also put good micrometer in there but that’s more for measuring tighter than you’re probably looking for.
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Jan 8, 2024 17:58
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Is there a good YouTube or somethin on how to correctly use the digital calipers I have? I can get relatively different measurements of the same part based on which way I hold the calipers and how hard I squeeze the jaws against the thing. This is why my parts always pass when I inspect them myself!
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Jan 9, 2024 05:24
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We mostly use the star of the previous thread title: The Hole Wizard 🕳️🧙♂️
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Jan 29, 2024 18:44
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Some Pinko Commie posted:Solidworks has a Stud Wizard now. If you’re designing a part that will be milled, PLEASE don’t model the threads. Use the other option (whose name I forget now). If it’s for 3D printing, on the other hand, go wild.
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Jan 29, 2024 19:27
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Is there a particularly good and free web-based app that will vector trace a bitmap? I use Inkscape at home but want to do similar things at work, without involving the IT elves.
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Feb 15, 2024 22:53
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Ambrose Burnside posted:, so I just take it for granted that you need a modestly-robust vector editing suite alongside that bitmap trace function Oh so you mean ‘not Mastercam’ 🤣 I really just want to get some vectors from an already pretty much silhouetted photo to do a quick engraving project with the work machinery for my wife. I’ve been successful doing similar workflow with Inkscape and Fusion360, but that was at a previous, less corporate job, where I could do what I wanted with the PCs. The trade-offs you accept for actual insurance and tons more pay….
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Feb 16, 2024 06:43
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A similar question (clocking threads so two pieces line up when screwed together) came up on one the Fusion Facebook groups a week back or so and the consensus (which I agree with) was that this kind of feature is super difficult to do and there is a reason you rarely see parts like this in real life. Better to design the thing with a captive nut for doing the thread mating and using another feature (typically mating flats) to clock the parts. Even if you can design the parts correctly on CAD, manufacturing it is super tough. Anything like that gets an instant no-bid from my shop.
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Feb 21, 2024 20:33
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Roundboy posted:Im 3d printing it so the manufacturing is dead simple. Do it like a cannon plug, where the tightening ring is a third piece and then have some kind of features sticking out from the lid and the container with holes for your lock/chain
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Feb 22, 2024 01:23
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