Hello I have been getting referred to some really wonderful tutorials from all the help this awesome forum has been giving me!
I’m starting to feel a bit scattered. I need to learn a massive amount of information to make full use of the machine I will be buying. Is there a start to end tutorial that I should go through? I don’t mind putting in time, but I’ve been jumping all around missing things.
I would strongly suggest… to just start somewhat simple and grow into it, rather than try to do it all at once. It’s ok if you don’t know or understand everything… most folks here likely don’t know EVERYTHING… I sure don’t. But if you let the fear of not knowing something more advanced stop you from doing the things that are in your expertise (or just outside it :)) then you will miss out on the fun.
I started with Box Making with Shapeoko - YouTube and expanded out from there.
Another more general source of info is Introduction - Shapeoko CNC A to Z
Sometimes I see folks getting stuck on things like “what are the perfect F&S”… to which really the answer is “with wood… pretty much what you’re comfortable with including the carbide create defaults”. Many things don’t have perfect answers but a range… and sometimes those ranges are very large.
(now if you go aluminum or polycabonate, those ranges are much smaller)
What works for me is that I have some design goal in mind and investigate/learn what I need to get there. A specific goal helps you focus.
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What would you like a tutorial to do?
Please let us know and we will work up a custom one for the task you would like to start with.
I bet you have them all up already but really I don’t know what to say that I need to learn first because every time I ask a question I realize how much I don’t know.
That said, I would limit this particular question to thoroughly learn, carbide create is there a set of tutorials I can go through from start to end, in order to teach me those things?
I should put in I will be working with wood mostly as I own a wood kitchen building shop now also, I will almost definitely upgrade to carbide create 3-D. Will I be wasting my time learning curve I create or should I study 3-D now?
I can’t thank you guys enough for all this help!!
definitely start with 2D stuff first; even in 3D designs you will use a lot of 2D techniques and just add more things to your arsenal.
Really, start with an idea, then build that end to end. I started with a simple square box (from the video series above), then I used a logo as the shape for the box and then I made a box with a design carved on top. Being able to do that gave me the confidence to a next level… (lots of multilayer name signs with cityscapes in the back ground etc etc)… until I got to the thing I wanted to build originally, which was a 3D terrain carve of the area I lived in at the time (pictures at Red Pin Terrain carve)
What seems overwhelming at first will get a lot simpler once you have done a few designs. At least for me I had to learn the wood/machine side of things from scratch while I’m naturally more comfortable with the digital side of things. But doing an end-to-end design (like a box, see video) really helped me connect both worlds together to have it “click”.
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That’s really good advice. I got kind of spun, trying to play with different designs from the clip are loaded in the program, and I have gotten a few things to come out properly so I guess back to the basics and master that.
I am actually working on a poster to document a machine which I am donating to a local Boy Scout Troop — we’ll work this out here, since I seem to do better on projects which are in my face on the forums (as opposed to hidden away on an assembly table in my basement) — suggestions and corrections are of course welcome.
It will mostly draw from:
and
and
so it would help if folks would review those and let us know of anything untoward or wihch could be improved or clarified there.
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YES,
Master the first one before you take on the next. Signs for me is what I did. Pocketing different depths. So many things you can do with signs that will lend knowledge for other projects.
Good Luck
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