First Build - Yet Another Alu Profile Router - 900 x 800

**Neale** · 11-01-2020

Personal view - F360 is well worth struggling with, although I'm not sure where you start. It is a steep learning curve at first and, to be honest, I suspect that personal tuition from a friend who knows it is the best way to go. Once you are off the ground, then the videos start to come into play. One problem is that based on reputation the best series of tutorials available online are those from Lars Christenson but they were made a couple of years ago and the F360 user interface has changed a bit since then. Not massively - an experienced user would very quickly see and adapt to the differences - but for a beginner, things like saying "Select the Model workspace" is a bit misleading when it is now called the Design workspace. I've done a bit of tuition for local model engineering club members so I'm aware of some of the problems beginners have and I'm not sure that they are addressed very well in the online tutorials. That's all true, anyway, for the CAD and modelling side of it. CAM and gcode production is a different issue where things are a whole lot more complicated but for design work, keep bashing at F360, get a bit of help if you can from someone you can actually ask questions, and you'll get there.

You will find a few photographs of my machine in a thread here somewhere. People did laugh. Nevertheless, the machine works, and it works better than i ever expected. I'm doing a fair bit of detailed machining in steel these days, which isn't bad for a machine designed and built for working with wood. Keep at it - you' ll get there!

**CaptainBarnacles** · 11-01-2020

Originally Posted by Neale

Personal view - F360 is well worth struggling with, although I'm not sure where you start. It is a steep learning curve at first and, to be honest, I suspect that personal tuition from a friend who knows it is the best way to go. Once you are off the ground, then the videos start to come into play. One problem is that based on reputation the best series of tutorials available online are those from Lars Christenson but they were made a couple of years ago and the F360 user interface has changed a bit since then. Not massively - an experienced user would very quickly see and adapt to the differences - but for a beginner, things like saying "Select the Model workspace" is a bit misleading when it is now called the Design workspace. I've done a bit of tuition for local model engineering club members so I'm aware of some of the problems beginners have and I'm not sure that they are addressed very well in the online tutorials. That's all true, anyway, for the CAD and modelling side of it. CAM and gcode production is a different issue where things are a whole lot more complicated but for design work, keep bashing at F360, get a bit of help if you can from someone you can actually ask questions, and you'll get there.

You will find a few photographs of my machine in a thread here somewhere. People did laugh. Nevertheless, the machine works, and it works better than i ever expected. I'm doing a fair bit of detailed machining in steel these days, which isn't bad for a machine designed and built for working with wood. Keep at it - you' ll get there!

Originally Posted by Kitwn

That's exactly why there are no detailed photographs of my machine on the forum.

Re Fusion 360: I know it's very powerful, it's free and I would benefit significantly from mastering it, but every time I try to get competent in it's use I get frustrated instead and return to my old friend CamBam.

Kit

Haven't heard of CamBam, I'll take a look. I like 'free' and open source software but I have no objection to paying for good software if it gets the job done. F360 is hugely frustrating at the moment, especially so as I normally pick up new concepts pretty quickly, but I would like to persevere and reap the rewards as I've seen just how great it can be. While I'm CNCing as a hobby (for the time being) I still value my time and if I just can't get the results I'm looking for in a timely fashion I may well look into alternatives.

**CaptainBarnacles** · 11-01-2020

I have two different Y axis arrangements which I'd be grateful for some input on please. I originally designed my machine with top mounted linear rails but then thought I would give side mounted rails a try in order to lower the gantry by about an inch. The trade-off is that my bed will have to shrink by about 80mm from side to side as I've already got the gantry profiles (I know, design first, shop later - I've now got this tattooed on my forearms!).

Any opinions about the pros and cons of either would be much appreciated.