What machine is required please

[Arzo10]

Thanks guys,

I had looked on ebay at the Chinese 3040 machines, I assume they are not good enough?

I am not talking major scale here to begin with, the like of this letter? It is 12mm thick by 250mm

I dont think at the minute vcarving etc is what she is looking at? Just cutting out this type of font and triangle shapes and hearts etc at 6mm thick.

[JAZZCNC]

Thanks guys,

I had looked on ebay at the Chinese 3040 machines, I assume they are not good enough?

I am not talking major scale here to begin with, the like of this letter? It is 12mm thick by 250mm
I dont think at the minute vcarving etc is what she is looking at? Just cutting out this type of font and triangle shapes and hearts etc at 6mm thick.

I get asked this all the time and it's often discussed and argued on Forums. These Chinese Machines IME are GREAT.!! . . . But only for learning the Basics of CNC.
If you want to do any serious work they quickly become more trouble than they are worth. They are unreliable at best and at the really cheap end very unreliable to the point of breaking within weeks or days if pushed remotely serious.

The problem comes from several issues all related to there cheapness.! At the Lower price range the Spindle is by far the weakist link and often blows up within weeks due to it's low power and poor quality. This mostly happens because folks try to cut too deep or for too long and it overheats and dies.

Next is the Main electronics which are basicly low powered junk all-in-one boards which when dead take the whole machine down.
General wiring is low quality so often cause troubles with strange happenings like false E-stops or missed steps etc and all sorts of other weird head banging happenings

Then you have the fact the machine isn't actually fast enough to cut most materials correctly. Esp MDF. This means while it does cut these materials it's taking much longer than it should, Is wearing cutters out much quicker and worse still giving a poor finish.

It gets worse because when trying to cut materials like MDF etc that need higher feedrates the machine is constantly working at it's Max capabiltys 100% of the time which further add's to the problem because the Cheap electronics can't handle this High duty cycle so die even faster.!! . .

Honestly for anything other than Learning then they are best avoided.

[Chaz]

It might be worth looking at Fusion 360. Its free until you earn over £100K per annum from it. Its very powerful and whilst it doenst do 4th axis CAM yet, it is very powerful (for no money).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-GBpUZ3piY this is worth a look to show the very basics.

In this thread Ive just started, the drawings are renders from within Fusion 360. http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/9283-...4268#post74268

[amd7000]

Yea. I've started with that and it seems it would be everything i'll ever need.

[Chaz]

Yea. I've started with that and it seems it would be everything i'll ever need.

I happened to buy Cambam and its now not being used. Pity, nice product for quick things though but once you get used to Fusion .... dont need much else.

[Neale]

I've also been using Fusion 360 but so far, only for the CAD side of it, not CAM. I did want to try it out on a couple of little MDF components that I wanted to cut as profiles (nothing fancy) but I went back to vCarve once I'd produced a DXF file as I couldn't find any way in F360 to automatically generate holding tabs. In vCarve, this is trivially easy and there are plenty of options about how/where/what shape. Maybe this is the difference between an aimed-at-woodworkers and an aimed-at-engineers product? Anyway, it's the silly little kind of thing that might be relevant to the OP, given the kinds of work his wife wants to do.

Unless anyone can tell us how to easily generate holding tabs in F360? I'd really like to know!

[Chaz]

I've also been using Fusion 360 but so far, only for the CAD side of it, not CAM. I did want to try it out on a couple of little MDF components that I wanted to cut as profiles (nothing fancy) but I went back to vCarve once I'd produced a DXF file as I couldn't find any way in F360 to automatically generate holding tabs. In vCarve, this is trivially easy and there are plenty of options about how/where/what shape. Maybe this is the difference between an aimed-at-woodworkers and an aimed-at-engineers product? Anyway, it's the silly little kind of thing that might be relevant to the OP, given the kinds of work his wife wants to do.

Unless anyone can tell us how to easily generate holding tabs in F360? I'd really like to know!

I found it by mistake previously.

2D Contour Operation > Geometry > TABS