I found a chart on the forums with feeds and speeds for .25 endmills, but on that sheet I have no idea what router the 611 is, is that the router that comes with the machine. FNS Chart
I also found an excel spreadsheet, but the worksheet requires a lot of spindle information that is just not available on the carbide 3D website, which is kind of weird, what are the RPM values for each setting on the standard compact router that carbide sells, is there a data sheet available for the router, because I cant find it.
What is a good program for 3D projects, I am trying to cut a 3D model in 3/4" layers and glue them together, but Im having trouble figuring out how to do 2 sided modeling. Carbide Create standard or regular version doesn’t appear to do what I want. Aspire/Vectric seems to do it, but I seem to get a lot of cusping in the preview, and it takes away from the details when it probably needs to plunge all the way through the material. I’m probably just not using the software right.
I think for my purposes Fusion360 is the route I need to go, I already have a license for it and it seems to be the most powerful out of the 3 options I’ve looked at. So does anyone have any good resources for Shapeoko or 3Axis milling with Fusion360?
How deep should I mount bits into the router?
Should I use the metal dowel whenever I am using the Bitzero V2, or is using the endmill just fine?
for mechanical design, Autodesk Fusion 360 is popular, or Alibre Atom3D — we sell this bundled w/ MeshCAM: Alibre Workshop CAD/CAM - Carbide 3D — if you prefer opensource or free, you might want to consider FreeCAD
another question, filling in the tool options in fusion 360 and its asking for a ramp feed rate, is this a % of the normal feedrate, or can I keep it the same.
And don’t feel bad about it, I think most of us have crashed our machines a few times, I just got better about realising I’d told the machine to do something dumb and hitting the e-stop before I got to listen to motors missing steps…
Some may even say crashing your machine in the early days is kind of like a rite of passage… or that’s what I told myself anyways.
Also at first I also found it a little overwhelming to try and get all the settings right/perfect which meant slow getting out of the gate and making chips in the earlier days of having my machine. That said things really start clicking once you run a few jobs. Maybe take the time to take down notes of how things went along the way and adjust your tool library in Fusion 360 if that’s your CAD/CAM of choice. I did some test cuts and played with the feedrate in Carbide Motion +/-10% increments and also the RPM dial on the Carbide Compact router while testing and then brought this info back into Fusion and adjust my tool cutting parameters in the tool library.
By the way if you are looking for a .csv (ie. Excel Spreadsheet) of the latest Carbide Create tool library and cutting parameters I’ve managed to find a round about way to get them. I did quickly look but didn’t find where they are by default however if you duplicate the tool libraries in Carbide Create it will save your copy as a .csv under your user profile in the following folder (Edit: Windows OS)
I also use fusion 360 and when I first started I was motivated towards maximizing depth of cut (just as an example) After those crashes, I realized I’m a hobbyist and slowing down is ok. I don’t need to plunge .4 inches into pine plywood even though I could I guess if I wanted to.
I set my feeds/speeds depths of cuts etc pretty conservatively. Learned that from previous crashes.
doesn’t have stepover values — one would start at 50% of the endmill diameter (25% for tougher materials which would be entered as 75% in CC) and adjust as your need for surface finish dictates.
That’s why it’s a better idea to use the feeds and speeds in Carbide Create which cover all such values and are a bit more conservative and better tested.
