Reached the stage in my Fusion 360 journey where I'm going to enter the CAM environment. Been printing on my Prusa, lasering my K40 & SPAM diode with Lightburn. Want to enter the CNC milling zone with something really small so and can cut my teeth to see if I like making tiny chips. I want to design in Fusion, save and import into something like Mach 4 or UCCNC. I heard back today from SPAM that their mills run on Arduino and "Our 3020-SPAM is a GRBL based CNC machine, so I'm afraid it does not compatible with Mach 3 or UCCNC. You can control it with the GRBL controller like Candle, UGS, Inkscape, Easel..." Can someone here take mercy on me and explain/guide me on what machine I would want to shop for where I can use a proper control software like Mach 4 or UCCNC? For instance do I want to search for a machine with a certain kind of controller? I appreciate your time and effort on me.
Which machine? Checkout docs:machines:comparison [OpenBuilds Documentation] and base your choice on your needs (size etc) Which controller? The most plug and play controller there is: docs:blackbox:start [OpenBuilds Documentation] Which software? See docs:software:overview [OpenBuilds Documentation] Accesories? See docs:interface:start [OpenBuilds Documentation] and docs:xyzprobe:start [OpenBuilds Documentation] "mach" like Free software - OpenBuilds CONTROL for your BlackBox: see docs:software:openbuilds-control [OpenBuilds Documentation] Want to use Fusion360 CAM: Use our Post Processor docs:software:fusion360 [OpenBuilds Documentation]
GRBL/Arduino based controllers work perfectly well, and all the related software is free (why would you want Mach?). You can use the Openbuilds postprocessor for Fusion360 and get perfect Gcode for your GRBL based controller. docs:software:fusion360 [OpenBuilds Documentation] There are many GUI's for GRBL controllers, but the best 2 are our own OpenBuildsCONTROL and bCNC. Both work across all OS platforms though some will require a bit of fiddling. I have had both running perfectly on a Raspberry Pi 4 under Ubuntu 20 though my normal controller is an i7 HP laptop running Xubuntu 18 and bCNC.
