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Potential Transition to Fusion 360 or other CAM software
My work currently has two primary CNC machines. The first being a Multicam 7000 series router primarily used for sheet aluminum, and the second is an Elumatec SBZ151, which is used for milling, drilling, sawing, etc. of aluminum extrusion. I am currently in school and one of the classes I have taken introduced me to Fusion 360, but primarily on the design side of things - rather than CAM. I am the programmer of the router at my work, but seen as though a large portion of what we do on the machine is flat sheet, we have rarely had a need for any kind of 3d software for the machine (I do, however, see the ability for 3d milling as being beneficial). There are times, however, that we run aluminum extrusion on the router if the Elumatec has a heavy workload. This leads to me creating sometimes rather involved fixtures and at times leaving me with no choice other than to do a substantial amount of manually editing the gcode output to accommodate the various issues the fixture may pose.
I have been recently dabbling in the CAM side of fusion 360 for the router, and I think that with fusion's excellent simulation, 3d capabilites, and ability to detect fixtures, it seems to me like it would be a good supplemental program for what we do. There are some things that I am looking for in a CAM program that I either have not been able to find in Fusion 360, or it does not currently have. Most generally, all of our sheet metal flat patterns are done in Autocad, and then I nest everything manually in Autocad before importing the DWG into EnRoute to apply the toolpaths. Enroute allows me the ability to have several sheets all in the same file, and to fairly quickly apply the toolpaths and export each sheet individually to a file for operation at the machine. Some of the largest drawbacks of our current processes with the router are as follows:
- As earlier mentioned, fixture design is something that can get rather involved. Our fixtures tend act more or less as an obstacle course for the machine which leads me to laying everything out and manually editing the code to maneuver around the fixture/clamps. I would like to see a way that I can model the fixture/clamps, control the rapid movement of the machine in the CAM program, and view it in the simulation.
- We have a material optimization program (The Itemizer) that we can input the size and quantity of material on hand and then the overall size of the part. The program will then generate different layouts based off of the part based off of its block sizes .It does not take into account the actual shape of the part; it bases everything off of the overall length and width of the part (i.e. if there were two mitered parts it would not nest the miters together. It only looks at overall dimensions.) I typically use this to start off and then use its layouts as a guideline and then see what ways I can tweak things while I am nesting to better our material usage. I would like to see a program that I could directly import the drawing of the parts and then have it nest them automatically for me.
- If I program a part later to find out there is an issue with the part, I go back to autocad (because I find EnRoute incredibly difficult to draw/make changes in), make the changes as required, reimport into EnRoute, then export back to the machine. I know that with Fusion 360 the toolpaths always remain linked to the original model, and I would love to find a way to make the CAM program associative with autocad. However, from what I understand, this is not an option at this time. I think that a CAM program that would allow me to fairly easily make changes to the original drawing would be very beneficial.
I personally enjoy using Fusion 360, and I intend on presenting it to my company, but at the same time if there is another Autodesk program that would help facilitate my workflow, I would love to look into it. The other potential selling point of Fusion 360 or another program to my company could potentially be the ability to program the Elumatec. I am unsure if there is an easy way to set up saw cuts in fusion. One of the biggest drawbacks I know of with Elucad (the current cam program for the machine) is that it does not allow you to nest miters easily. Essentially elucad views each part individually and automatically square cuts the ends of the parts. Due to this, you cannot nest the miters together accounting for the kerf of the blade. This not only adds additional time to the process, but having to square cut each part can occasionally mean getting one less part out of a stock length. I personally do not much deal with that machine, so my knowledge of it is very limited. This is just something else that I feel is worth looking into when shopping for a new CAM program.
I know there are multiple Autodesk CAM programs available, but Fusion 360 is the only one that I am even remotely familiar with. As I stated earlier, most of what we do is flat sheet, so the ability to work off of a drawing rather than having to have the part modelled is a huge plus, and some of the other major things that I see to help improve my workflow would be the ability to detect fixtures (and give me the ability to control the rapid movement around the fixtures in the CAM program), an optimization/nesting program that looks at the true shape of the part and allows me to nest multiple, different sized sheets at once; as well as looking into what options there may be for programming the Elumatec. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the way we have done things up until this point, I am just trying to find more efficient methods, automate some things when possible, and help speed up my workflow. I look forward to input on what program(s) may be available to assist with this. If anything I have stated is not completely clear, please let me know. I have a couple short videos showing a fixture we currently have made that may help clarify some of the situations we occasionally encounter.
Thank you,
Jordan
Fusion