My first go at making a CNC router

[Norgmonster]

Hi All,

Its great to have such a community to be able to talk to. I'm 31 and i have never joint a forum before.

I hope i can contribute as much as i will ask of you .

First of all (TOTAL NEWBIE QUESTION), were can i get preexisting CAD files of components for my cnc router plan? Stuff like ball screws, rack rails, drive rails and so on?

Best,

Norgmonster

[Clive S]

You can get them for the hwin site and this place https://grabcad.com/ Have you decided on a cad program Fusion360 I think is free for hobby use and it also has CAM built in. There are plenty of tutorials about on the web.

[Norgmonster]

Thanks for the info. It will be a great starting point.

I've needed a project like this to finally make me learn a descent CAD program, and AutoCAD has been on my desktop gathering computer program dust for far to long :-)

I've never heard of Fusion360. Will it run on a Mac? If it also runs CAM then it might be worth a look.

Whatever gets my plans out to you guys faster the better :-).

Best for now,

NorgMonster

[lucan07]

Fusion360 will run on Apple Mac® OS® X Mavericks (10.9.5), OS® X Yosemite (10.10.5), OS® X El Capitan (10.11)

I personally found it by far the easiest to use and learn from the many I installed.

[Norgmonster]

Good to know. I will give it a try first thing in the morning.

[Norgmonster]

Most of you guys may know all about it but I have found a great resource of 3d CAD files on a site called www.b2b.partcommunity.com. The files are also available in a number of formats so they can be read by almost any program. https://grabcad.com/ only seams to support Solid Works.

If anyone is interested then let me know what they think.

My CNC router is moving along and i hope to have something to show you all tomorrow evening.

Good night all,

Norgmonster