Hello I'm new to building CNC machines and by older brother recently was interested in buying a X-Carve. Once i googled it i thought it looked rather weak and ended up signing up to open builds in hope of building him something much stronger. I really liked Kyo's Sphinx design and after reading through his build I'm comfortable to build it. The issue i have now is that by brother needs something much larger. So i have been looking at using stronger profiles like 80/20 and some HIWIN rails. Can someone suggest what software I should be using to flesh out the design of the build? A program that has the profiles in its database or maybe one that i could import the files into for the extrusions? I understand i will need some CAD software anyway once i have the CNC built and thought Fusion 360 would be good as it covers both the CAD and CAM. Maybe i should invest in Fusion early and use that to design the build too ? I would also like to present mu build visually so the members of this forum could pick at some areas of the build Im struggling with. Thanks for your time Colm Boorman
Hi Colm, Welcome to the forum. Many members here are using sketchup with the sketchucam add-on or fusion 360. You should try both. They're both free. Joe
Thanks Joe. I left SketchUp and fusion 360 downloading last night... I only realised it was free to hobbyists (fusion360) just before bed. Will grab that add-on once home too. I'm familiar with inventor and it's general work flow so I hope the cross over is painless. Thanks for your help!
What's nice about both of those programs is the huge user database of parts already available so you can find the 80/20 you want in the library and import it into your drawing. If you are new to both of these programs the learning curve is quite the challenge.. keep at it and use youtube video tutorials to help when struggling.
Having 32 years of experience using 3D CAD and CAM software I have seen the various software evolve from rather crude wireframe modelers to really sophisticated parametric software capable of allowing me to model very complex 3D shapes such as jet engine turbine blades and then actually create tool paths within the software that I can use to generate G and M code programs for machining I'd suggest the secret to becoming good at this kind of stuff is to practice and actually create the shapes yourself. No one ever got good at this by surfing to find a pre-existing model or pushing the EZ button. Sorry.
