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I am on the Isle of Wight if that counts. I wish I was better with CAD and CAM no very good with either. I wish I was better with CAM as it would mean I could do a lot more on my mill.
If your ever in the area your welcome to get in contact
Thanks
Steve
Steve - Thanks for contact. Likewise if you happen to be over here.
Currently switching to Fusion 360 and with an SW grounding (and Y/Tube) it is becoming an excellent resource. Happy to help if a discussion would be of value. Even a "calm down" chat can be very effective in my experience? Perhaps you know what I mean??
Running Mach3 50/50 metal and wood. Benchtop Router, Mill and Lathe.
Leadhead
Since you mentioned SolidWorks. The next of kin to that program is OnShape. It is written buy the same people. If you have time it may be worth having a look at it. I did not migrate to that because of some of their policies. Also working Fusion as one of my clients still draws in Autocad and fusion adapts models very easily from dwg files. Fusion also have a very good native CAM module.
George - Yes I use F360 for design, programming, and postprocessing to Mach3. Only needs an occasional tweak to suit my gear.
Very successful and could not be cheaper.
Still struggling with your SS however!!!
Oh dear... The offer of help is still there to get it working even if it is not the smoothsteppers fault
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leadhead
Thank you very much Leadhead.
I have Fushion 360 and have watched lots of videos on it. I have not used it yet or my CNC mill for about 6 months for that matter. I will be even more rusty when I get back to it sometime this month! I use my mill for plastic but hope to have a go at some aluminum sometime. It is good of you to offer to help with a chat that could well help me a lot. It is the CAM side I get a bit flustered with the most!
I look forward to making a start the basics using Fushion360
All the best
Steve
Well I'm in East Sussex, and have been playing with CNC and hence CAD/CAM as an interest for more years than I care to think about. Been retired many years now, and have spent my time resurrecting 'beyond economic repair' industrial CNC machines.
As well as a fairly comprehensive manual machine setup I have:
A/ A Beaver Partsmaster CNC mill with Heidenhain TNC355 controller
B/ A Fanuc TapeCut Model M Wire EDM machine with a Fanuc 6M controller
C/ A Traub TND350G 5 axis dual spindle lathe with a TX8F controller
All the above have been dragged back into life having got close to being scrapped - the Traub being the one that was the greatest challenge (it weighs 4.5 tons !!!!!!)
Fortunately when I retired I fulfilled my ambition to create the 'ultimate workshop' so have room to squeeze them in :)
Andrew - You seem to be my closest neighbor. I had a Beaver Partsmaster in one of my toolrooms. (back in the day) I am also retired and only using small size equipment at home these days. It would like good to to make your acquaintance if the opportunity should arise.
Leadhead, - you'd be more than welcome to come and play :) Kettle's always on and it's nice to put faces to names. If you had Partsmasters you probably met Mike Coltron, the chap who used to look after them.
I'm over near brighton however I'm struggling to find a program that i can get my head around. I grew up using 2d auto cad as that is what my farther used for architecture. I have down loaded a few trial versions of software but have not had much luck at all. At the moment i only use my cnc for cutting surfboards which has its own program and you basically design it in the 3 views and it does the rest, i think if i could find a program more like that i would stand a lot better chance of picking something up. I have so many things i want to draw up but just can't seam to figure how to model them in 3d.