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i have built a model in another design program and exported as stl, now i import stl into fusion,can i edit it using the sculpting workspace?
@PhilProcarioJr I think truth is in this field are many that are not very well educated and versed. Obviosuly I have a different angle and depth because I am in teaching so researching and learning is part of my job and interest. But it shocks and confuses me so often to see how resistant designers and engineers can be when it comes to expanding their knowledge. After all knowing something others dont can easily result into a competetive edge - but ah well.
We have a 15k (we bought it ) CNC in our woodshop custome build and it never really ever ran well so sad and silly. Now the company went bankrupt in addition lol
I never looked into building one completely your self - do you have some guides or tips where to look for something that is small enough to work on products like
the size of a shoe or hair dryer - so kinda table CNC?
Claas Kuhnen
Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit
Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University
Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design
Wow, for 15K I could have built one wicked 4 axis CNC Mill....I had about $900 for everything into my mill.
My new design which is 100X better is only going to cost about $2500 to build and it will be able to cut Metal at 60" a min and wood at 200" a min.
If your looking for solid info and want to learn all you need to build your own look here:
https://buildyourcnc.com/default.aspx/
I wouldn't buy a machine off of them though as you could build better on your own, but they have a wealth of information.
So it's a great place to start.
If you ever need help with the CNC stuff just let me know.
Phil Procario Jr.
Owner, Laser & CNC Creations
@PhilProcarioJr Yeah I am not very happy with what they bought and thus for years I was not able to even include CNC in my classroom. But sadly a CNC we cannot also put into a class room grr.
Thank you for the link I will look it up and then do some reading. I would be happy if you could help me in case I have some questions as it seems you really know a lot about those custom CNC.
This cannot be rocket science.
Specifically with Fusion 360 and CAM how well does this work together with those cuctom CNC?
Claas
Claas Kuhnen
Faculty Industrial Design – Wayne State Universit
Chair Interior Design – Wayne State University
Owner studioKuhnen – product : interface : design
Nice work on the router Phil.
I like you, have started from scratch. I had my router mill made from paper drawings that were done at the fab shop.
I have used stepper motors and mach3. To be honest my results have been mixed. I have reliability issues in some instances the machine has lost zero on a axis half way through a job.
When that happens it's very frustrating. The remedy for this is to find a investor and install industry grade componants.
Here is a picture of my set up. 
I am quite away down the road to sorting out the componants to replace what's there at the moment.
The biggest snagging piont is finding a investor. When the upgrades get done we will be able to run feeds of 10mtr a min and Rapids of 15mtr a min.
Completly close loop system.
We we currently run feeds of 900mm a min so you can see it's going to make a huge difference to our capacity.
I will also finish the machine off with its enclosure.
Things to to do are endless it seems.
You get my vote Phil for a job at autodesk. I'm surprised Colin from the mesh work space hasn't got in contact with you.
As you have been working for ten years on this kind of workflow your input would be a major boost.
Thanks for your help.
Your right it's not rocket science and to be honest the core of a CNC is simple, it's the software driving the CNC that is comparable to rocket science. Lucky for us we have things like Fusion and Mach3.
The only part of designing and building your own CNC is figuring out what size Motors to buy. You have to do a lot of math to figure out needed torque if you wanted a truly optimized CNC machine. But if your just looking to build something that works well, it's pretty simple. For your class you don't need to put much into this, now if this machine was to run a business and you need really fast cutting 24/hours a day that would be different. Either way I can help you with both.
"Specifically with Fusion 360 and CAM how well does this work together with those custom CNC?"
I export G-Code to Mach 3 from Fusion all the time and it works flawlessly. A very easy process. I have been told Fusion can drive my CNC also but I have not looked into this yet.
Phil Procario Jr.
Owner, Laser & CNC Creations
@Anonymous
Kudos to a fellow Machine builder!
"When that happens it's very frustrating. The remedy for this is to find a investor and install industry grade components."
Just so you know Steppers suck for CNC Machines. Want to solve your lost steps issue...switch to servos with encoders. There is a reason industrial grade CNC machines don't use stepper motors.
Specifically switch to the stepper killer...
https://www.teknic.com/products/clearpath-brushless-dc-servo-motors/#clearpath_sd_info
These are the very best motors you will ever use. I never looked back, and the amount of power and torque these little motors put out is insane. and as far as accuracy..
https://www.teknic.com/watch-video/
Oh and did I mention they are almost the same price as your stepper motors of the same size and you can use your current driver setup! 
Colin did touch base with me and I offered help, but not working on the team limits how much help I can offer greatly.
Phil Procario Jr.
Owner, Laser & CNC Creations
"Make it as rigid as you can. I know there's old hands that will roll their eyes like it's obvious but for the scratchers like us it's a lesson that can be hard learned."
This is very very very true, also the reason I scrapped my first design....
No matter what if you build one make the frame STEEL!
You could get by with aluminium if all you want to cut is wood, plastic...soft stuff...still go with STEEL.
Just as important go with a servo motor setup...otherwise save your money because you will have wasted it otherwise.
Just my 2 cents.
Phil Procario Jr.
Owner, Laser & CNC Creations
@Anonymous
Honestly with my setup and running 4 axis it's been solid, granted in the beginning when I was learning how to set all this up I had issues but now my setup is rock solid and issue free. I have been testing Mach 4 and I must say it's very nice. So unless something changes I will probably migrate to Mach 4. I took electronic engineering in college and moved to a system builder so setting up windows to run reliable has been a non-issue for me. On the computer running Mach 3 it's stripped of everything that's not needed including drivers and software. 99% of the time windows has issues because of 3rd party drivers. I have run Unix and Linux for years and they are both great but none of my software is made for them so......and I refuse to run a mac..sorry apple fans but they are not for me.
Phil Procario Jr.
Owner, Laser & CNC Creations
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Phil Procario Jr.
Owner, Laser & CNC Creations
@PhilProcarioJr wrote:Nick, trust me I understand what you are saying and for a lot of people your method would work just fine, but what I am doing and what I was trying to show Frank was how to build custom models that will go on his scanned meshes then be converted into solids in the end for creation. Meshmixer and Momento are not modeling apps so you can't create custom meshes unless your combining existing ones. Your work flow would probably work fine for @Anonymous.....well for the most part anyway. I wish I could show you what I'm talking about but I am on vacation for 2 weeks and sadly I don't have the time right now. I already have the perfect work flow for my needs I am trying to help others like @Anonymous and @Anonymous. Frank needs something more like my work flow and yours would only work for some of his stuff. This skeleton I am doing could easily be done with your method but it wouldn't work because Frank would loose surface control unless he cuts the imported models up to create reference points...that makes for a messy time line and a lot of wasted creation time. I control the reference points because I am creating the quad mesh for import so all topology flows in a way that gives me perfect reference points. If I was to use Instamesh or Momento the topology flow is not going to match my needs there for I would need to cut the imported geometry to match my needs...that's a lot of unnecessary steps and wasted time IMO. I have been working on this work flow for years and the way I'm doing it now works best for me. I am happy with my results and so are my clients. That's why I said I don't think you understand the point of this thread because everything you have shown doesn't show a way to control surface topology, so your end results are reference geometry that doesn't work for the needs I am describing. Frank wants to make cyborg/human body in CAD so to make his life easier mesh flow is critical...without it and he will have a ton of work ahead of him.
Just my 2 cents.
so here is an update on my workflow...
I started with this guy on thingiverse at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:456203
I got him into Fusion eventually by figuring out the meshmixer -> memento quads -> Fusion 360 import mesh workflow:
The loss of fidelity is pretty evident and disappointing.
This is all an experiment at this point, so I need some stock to carve this into.
Target renderer is an inventables x-carve 1k.
I built mine with a split top table so I could violate the z-axis and use oversize stock.
for example, I could do something like this:
I have a stack of firewood in the garage: meet your new target stock piece:
so now the challenge is to get this shape into Fusion 360 so I can set it up as the stock body and then generate a toolpath to carve into it.
I used 123d to 'catch' it there in my driveway, then once again traversed the meshmixer -> memento -> fusion path to get it into the model space:
This where I start to REALLY appreciate everything @PhilProcarioJr has been saying.
I know 123dCatch is not a precision workflow tool, but it is all I have until I can save up enough for an occipital scanner in a few months.
Importing the mesh, I immediately notice that the sizing is off.
To remedy this, my only recourse is to take a series of measurements on screen and in real life using a tape measure, and then use them to apply a scaling factor to get the mesh in the workspace to assume it's actual size. When I do this I notice that the difference between the measurements in the model and real life vary by factors of anywhere between ~3x and ~3.6x:
That is a lot of variance.
in a tight corner it would make a BIG difference.
After playing with it I settle on a scaling factor of ~3.2x, which in the end seems surprisingly close, but is not precise in any way...
I convert the mesh to a body, and arrange things the way I want them:
My next steps are to buy a couple of clearing bits and set up the toolpaths.
All in all very educational couple of days getting to this stage.
I will post again when I start to carve.
Any comments or advice welcomed.
mirroring a post from the Inventables forum:https://discuss.inventables.com/t/so-happy-finished-first-attempt-at-antique-reproduction/23712
I have posted here before about my current carving project: here is an update on how it ended up:
I got part way through milling the project and started having trouble with my z not tracking properly.
It turned out that I was losing steps because the two little nuts that hold the gear head to the top of the z-motor cam had wormed their way lose, and when the cam turned the gear was slipping. Once I figured that out, and go them tightened down, magic was ready to happen again:
I used an 1/8" ball mill for the finishing pass. The model is built in fusion 360, using easel as a gcode sender. The toolpath for the clearing passes was a straight 3d pocket clearing, but for the finishing path it was a morphed spiral. All I can say is WOW! here is another view:
when you are mostly doing flat clearing work, as I have been doing, you do not really get a chance to see the x-carve move in all 3-axis at once while cutting or smoothing a complex shape. Watching it do so, while maintaining the tool contact so precisely, was actually thrilling. It made all of the effort to get to that point worthwhile.
Some lessons learned and things I will be thinking about:
Zero
The projects I am working on are weird in that they involve very complex mesh shapes being milled into irregular stock. Just getting the stock defined well enough to generate a toolpath is difficult. Then you have to mount the stock into a table that accommodates very deep-z material so it matches the x/y of the toolpath, which is a bit of an adventure in itself:
Finally you have to define a zero that you can come back to repeatedly as the clearing and finishing take place over multiple passes:
here you can see the bit set up for zero: I deliberately set the point on the stock in the single place on the stock that would not be carved and would be left as waste. On the last finishing pass I lost the Zero point, as it snapped off to accommodate the milling head, which ended the milling passes as I no longer had the ability to set zero.
so the thought is to try to set up some other way of defining/recording zero so I can find it again even as I mill the entire surface and lose the physical point. The constraints are that using easel does not allow independent setting of x/y/z: you can only set 'zero' once for all three. Also, with a split top table and arbitrary stock placement, a touch plate sort of approach seems like it might not work. I'm literally wondering if I could solve this with a couple of intersecting laser beams. More to follow as I work it out.
Stock Definition
As noted, the stock I am cutting into is non-standard. In this case it is literally a piece of firewood. To define it so I could generate a toolpath, I used Autodesk 123d catch to generate a mesh model.
I then had to size the mesh in Fusion 3d so it was the right size to embed the face model into. Turns out I was not too precise in this, but pretty close. There was about 10mm of air cutting happening on either side of the x as the toolpath was written against a stock model that was slightly too big. I did not mind this as it meant that I cut cleanly off the edge of the stock as I had wanted, but it reminded me I need a better tool to generate this mesh model for the stock with and will be looking into that further.
Feeds and Speeds
At one point I had to edit the gcode so I would not have to sit through an hour or two of air cutting to get back to a point where I have been interrupted. It turned out I edited the file down too far: I turned on the mill and watched as it went into the stock and carved a 5 mm deep path straight through part of it at 1500 mm/min. Again, WOW!. I had NO IDEA it could do that: I was still playing with 1mm and 2 mm stepdowns. The notion a high speed pass through the stock like that had never crossed my mind: I thought the x-carve would either stall or snap the bit. So I learned it is stronger than it looks, and more capable than I thought.
so between the model being a first try, the stock being defined very imprecisely, the placement of the stock being somewhat haphazard, and then the multiple passes and technical issues I encountered, the idea I would be at all successful seems very sketchy. The fact it came out as well as it did seems a minor miracle.
some references, just to close this note about this project off:
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/soaringhorse/albums/72157667414591252/with/26041928014/2
the message threads that have helped me learn what I needed to know to complete this first project:
On Inventables:
Hi everyone, I am new here and hoping I am putting this in the right place. Please accept my apologies now if I am not: I'm trying to figure this out as I go and hope you will be patient with a newbie as I do. I am exploring the purchase of an x-carve and have some specific projects in mind. To ensure a good investment, I am attempting to 'build' one or more of these projects in software from start to toolpath, on the theory that if I can figure that out, the x-carve will be put to good use. I…
I'm preparing to buy and have a question I'm sure many of you have already dealt with. My initial project is an art project and will involve cutting faces into beams and wood pieces of various sizes, including pieces of cut / split firewood. the question is how to mount a block of firewood onto the wasteboard while providing sufficient clearance for the milling head. I understand some people may have created a 'waste board with a hole in the middle' type of setup, allowing for items > z-ax…
I've been trying to understand feed rates and depth of cut settings in Easel, and eventually for Fusion 360. On my first set of cuts I burned out a bit cutting some Oak. On my next set of cuts I snapped a small bit trying to push it too fast through some aluminum. Clearly you have to know this stuff to get it right. @AllenMassey had a great spreadsheet that calculated RPM settings, which taught me a lot, but I am using a deWalt and the advice I have seen is to keep it at the '1' setting, whi…
making a longish cut, ~2 hours 15 minutes, as part of series of longish cuts: from [Untitled] to[Untitled] using a model in fusion 360 [head of greek guy] and then embedding it partially into a block of firewood [CAM Path screenshot] to make it look like a salvage item... Tonight I was on cut #3 of 4 for my first attempt at doing this. I was using a 1/4" carbide clearing bit 1500 mm/min feedrate with 1.5mm DOC and 4mm stepover. The cut was creating a series of contours which will then be…
and on autodesk:
Finally: thanks to everyone here for your help in pulling this first project together.
You've ALL been really awesome, I've learned so much, and I feel like I really graduated from school today because of all your help and support. Thank you so much for everything.
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