Fusion 360 any good for woodwork?

[tanya-jpbespokejoinery]

Hi

Newbie to all of this, but we are trying out fusion 360. We are a bespoke joinery manufacturer and wanting to change our set up, using autocad, fusion 360 and then to inventor for our cnc machine. Is this possible with this software? I can’t seem to find any tutorials on wood, all seems to be other materials.

Any help I would be greatful.

Thanks

[seth.madore]

Curious, would you mind sharing your thought process behind involving three pieces of software? In Fusion, you can design the part, produce drawings, and then apply CAM and produce g-code for your CNC

[tanya-jpbespokejoinery]

Hi, thanks for your reply. At the minute we are using Autocad lt, we would ideally like to keep using it but move to Autocad. We thought you would have to use the 3 together. We want to be able to nest on our cnc as well, we thought this had to be done through the inventor nest add in.

[seth.madore]

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@tanya-jpbespokejoinery wrote:
 We want to be able to nest on our cnc as well, we thought this had to be done through the inventor nest add in.

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Ah, but there are two methods of Nesting in Fusion; a simple "Arrange" which is possible with a commercial subscription, and then there's the Nesting and Fabrication Extension which offers greater control of your Nest study (plus lots of good stuff to come). A Fusion subscription plus the Extension will likely be a fair bit cheaper than 3 separate software packages.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

just have a look at JoinerCAD

günther

[tanya-jpbespokejoinery]

That’s great, thank you for your help. I will have a look, anything cheaper is a plus! 

[MantasG_ADN]

Hi,

Try this Fusion 360 extension for woodworkers.

JoinerCAD webpage - https://www.joinercad.com/en

JoinerCAD video tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/@JoinerCAD

JoinerCAD download - https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=6875959433916861257&appLang=en&os=Win64 

[Engineering3M3X4E]

We have recently started using Fusion 360,  with 10 years of experience machining wood, my suggestion is to think very carefully about going to Fusion.  The provided posts are horrible, so expect to spend time and money on cleaning them up, unless you like 3 calls to home, 2 moves to 0, and 2 spindles stops, at the end of your post as was our case.  Second, depends on your CNC, once the Post was cleaned up, Thermwood 3 axis, seem to be fine to output, our Biesse though, its post just errors out most of the time, plus the Operator loses almost all control of machining, so plan on your programming's doing all the work if any tweaks need to be made to a program as the operator will be unable too.  Also, if you use an aggerate or saws, fusion is not for you.  Autodesk seems to think they don't need to be supported and have only made a token inclusion of them.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

From my experience, a key feature in answering the question is whether there is a viable post-processor for use on the machine.
It is well known that the large machine manufacturers (Biesse, Homag-Weeke ...) are not interested in providing information about the requirements because they want to sell their own CAM systems.
If you do not have extensive knowledge in the adaptation of generic PP, you will not reach your goal without professional PP developers.

günther

[coherag]

I have just spent 6 hours trying to get it cut a rotary job on my woodworking cnc machine. It wouldn't even consider it. My sainsmart 6050 isn't recognized or apparently supported by autodesk so I had to create a machine after 2 hours of stuffing around I finally worked out how to create the machine. Only to have it tell me that I can't use the Y axis as my rotation axis but that's where my rotary attachment needs to be plugged in to. I couldn't select a z axis to complete setup... and then I couldn't create a tool path because the only turning tools.... are engineering ones. Wouldn't let me use milling bits for a turning job. Mind you this is day one of my experience. So your results may vary but I felt like giving myself a concussion trying to work out how to get this program working for relief carving a rotary project. I can't find anything that doesn't cost 1k aud that will cut a rotary relief carving....