General > General Technical Chat
CNC machining metals.
olkipukki:
Try FreeCAD and see if it will fit
or Fusion360 if don't mind be online.
I will be more concerned about a learning curve, availability learning stuff, personal usability, public popularity...
harps:
--- Quote from: olkipukki on September 11, 2020, 09:38:30 pm ---Try FreeCAD and see if it will fit
or Fusion360 if don't mind be online.
I will be more concerned about a learning curve, availability learning stuff, personal usability, public popularity...
--- End quote ---
hi i tried freecad and found that I can move a circle or a point with the mouse freely...but i can't type in the values directly, there is no dialog box that shows the xyz position. I have never seen a program like this without the xyz dialog box. unless there is a hidden tab?
for example I make a sketch on a side of a box, I then make a circle and can move it around, but I can't place it exactly, by typing in the xyz parameters. i have to place it freehand with a mouse. |O, surly i am missing something here?
harps:
--- Quote from: MarkF on September 11, 2020, 06:46:34 pm ---Fusion360 is not free.
I have been using FreeCAD for my 3D prints.
It has its bugs but has been getting the job done for me. Plus lots of how-to videos.
--- End quote ---
hi mark. is there a hidden xyz dialogue box in freecad? When I am placing a circle in a sketch I have to use the mouse freehand. I can see the xyz pop up on the screen as I hold the mouse button down, and when i let go of the mouse button the xyz numbers vanish. no where in any tab can I then fine tune the placement. very unusual for a 3d package not to have xyz to fine tune. it must be me, surly.
Cerebus:
I'd like to sound a note of caution. It's very easy for someone without machining experience to take a 3D cad program and design a part that is almost impossible to manufacture, or will cost much more to manufacture than a functionally equivalent part that is designed by someone who has some insight into the machining process.
Say you have a pocket in a part (pocket in this sense is an arbitrary shape hole in a part that only goes part way through the part). Say you decide that it wants a 1/4" wide 45º chamfer between the walls and the floor of the pocket. That puts you into the territory of needing a 5 axis machine to do the machining rather than a cheaper 3D machine, or requires a lot of setup on a 3D machine, or requires a non-standard cutter. Whichever way you machine it, it costs more than a simple pocket with straight sides that meet the bottom at 90º. If you need a pocket like that for functional reasons, fine you bite the bullet and accept the cost. But a naïve design might include such a pocket without considering the manufacturability of it. Hopefully you can see where this goes for all sorts of other features, for knowing how to design a part so that it can be held in the machine while machining and so on.
Before you design parts and kick them off for someone else to manufacture you can save yourself potentially a lot of grief by learning a bit about the machining processes. You don't have to become an expert, just learn enough to be able to give a rough answer to 'how would you make this on a mill/lathe?'. Like, is this feature milled, or drilled, or drilled and reamed, or bored, or produced with a slitting saw, or turned. And to have an answer to "How do you machine all the features I want on this part while still being able to hold it (usually in a vice) to machine it?".
You can get a lot of this just from watching some basic machining videos on You Tube. There are worse starting places than the basic milling and lathe courses put together on the 'blondihacks' channel on You Tube. If you want to have a laugh and also watch some machining 'ThisOldTony' on You Tube is good value, but not as deliberately educational as blondihacks. Somewhere on You Tube is a series of videos on machining that MIT put together for students who needed to use the workshops to make parts but didn't have any machining experience - search for "MIT Machine Shop Videos".
harps:
Thank you for the suggestions for the youtube videos and not using curves on edges unless really needing them.
I shall make note for tomorrow to watch them.
thank you again : )
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