I’m a Fusion 360 user and just purchased a Shapeoko 5 Pro machine with the VFD spindle. My machine is mostly assembled, but my spindle hasn’t arrived yet, so, I literally have zero experience on it is so far aside from putting it (mostly) together. I do have a lot of 3D Printing experience, though, I don’t use F360 for the CAM side of that, just the CAD side.
I see that Carbide sends out software to use the machine, but I think I’d rather spend my time learning how to use the machine with F360 than another software. I feel like in the beginning, it might be less user friendly, but in the long term, I’ll be on a path to mastery quicker if I focus on F360, since I do my design work there anyway, and I am sure I can do more with it on the CAM side than the SW provided by Carbide.
Is this a sensible way to approach this? If not, please help me understand why.
If this is the way to go, if someone could point me to some good tutorials or other resources, that’s be awesome.
Fusion 360 has a steep learning curve. However they do have post processors for Shapeoko machines and one of our members has a modified post processor for F360. The CAD program generates gcode in conjunction with the post processor. So any gcode sender would work including Carbide Motion. There are other gcode senders out there that some people love and some hate.
I understand wanting to use one software but even with your 3d print experience I would suggest you get your feet wet with Carbide Motion and Carbide Create. There are a lot of things to learn on operating a Shapeoko and you only complicate your troubles with unknown software on an unknown machine to you.
When you get your feet wet then you could switch to F360 or any number of other CAD/CAM softwares out there like Vetric, Cutco, MeshCam and others both pay and free.
Get your feet wet before you jump off into the deep end of the pool. Maybe the pool is bottomless or only inches deep.
They’re are plenty of us here that use Fusion for CAD and CAM. There are a bunch of threads here with example files, CAM settings, and best practice.
If you have questions, you’ll get answers. What types of things are you looking to make?
The only times I’ve used Carbide Create was to setup the surfacing operation for the wasteboard. I’ve used Fusion 360 for CAD and CAM from the get go. Their personal use license allows free hobby usage. I’m sure Carbide Create has a ton of great functionality, but I’ve found Fusion 360’s CAM to not be terribly overwhelming if you stick to a few simple machining operations. Start with some simple cuts and give it a try!
I have the 4’x4’ version and this is in part because I have some furniture (cabinets/shelving) I’d like to make, but, I’ll likely also make some smaller signs, lettering, and possibly some thing even smaller and more intricate. This machine was expensive for me, but it is an investment. I’ll be selling product with it soon (I hope).
I’ve been reading threads here on F360 usage and watching some great videos about it too. Of course, I’m facing a steep learning curve, but I’m here for it.
This is my first post here and I’m already overwhelmed by the positivity of the responses (yours included). Thank you!
Well, that’s the thing, CM and CC are the unknowns in my scenario. I’m more familiar with Fusion 360 – at least as my design tool. I do think there would be value in using CC/CM at least once as I’m pretty sure it’ll help me understand other Shapeoko users more, which would ultimately mean learning more from others here in these forums, if nothing else.
Just for startup use CC and cm. You won’t be losing anything in F360. Plus the config has to be done in cm. If you have start up problems it will stream line troubleshooting. There are always startup problems.
Sounds like you’ll want to learn both F360 and another program like Carbide Create. Neither do everything optimally.
F360 will be great for your cabinet making and other functional endeavors. But it is fastback at making decorative stuff like signs. It doesn’t have an actual functional way to v-carve for example.
Carbide Create can do functional stuff, but I find it harder to add features that need dimensions. However it is far, far better at making decorative projects.
If you are going to be using the SO5 with F360 and 3rd party CNC interface software, just remember to edit the post processor so that it does not use inline comments. There is a thread about it here:
I can v-carve fine with F360. Here is a post from another user talking about doing v-carve inlays with F360:
That is a ton of math to avoid having to use a free program that does it inherently. I used the term “functional” and I guess that technically counts as functional since it works… it’s a 1 out of 100 on functional scale. So I guess I lose on a technicality… but I stand by my statement. You’re using the wrong tool for the job.
I use F360 on a daily basis and I have zero desire to attempt that instead of having it done in 2 minutes in Carbide Create or Vectric VCarve.
It’s not productive to approach a random online comment with a mentality of winning or losing. I want to clarify that I’m not your opponent; I was simply stating that you can indeed use Fusion 360 for V-carving, so the original poster is aware that it’s an option. In this situation, there’s no need to determine a winner or loser.
Since you do your CAD work in F360 it makes sense to me to just use F360 for CAM as well.
More or less out of the gates 2+ years ago when I got my Shapeoko Pro I went all in on the Fusion 360 path. Now sorry for the self-promotion but if it’s allowed here’s a link to my Instagram page and pretty much everything there has been done using Fusion 360 for CAD/CAM for all my projects.
Now as some may have pointed out for the more complex designs/meshes that I’ve used, especially those I’ve imported from my own Blender 3D objects creations, Fusion 360 at times has been very sluggish performance wise (edit: and I do have a fairly beefy workstation which probably helps). If this was my main stream of income I’d probably be much more inclined to investigate/invest in other tools/software for the more complex/decorative stuff, but for what is a side gig and for my own pleasure, I’ve just remained really patient for a few of these projects while working on the CAD/CAM in Fusion 360.
As for V-Carving I’ve found the 2D Engrave toolpath to be really good. I posted this in another thread on the forum but this latest project of mine is a text inlay and the fit was great, simply use the sketch vectors/lines, no offsets (for inlay plugs), nothing like that and have been very satisfied with the results. Granted it did take me some figuring out to get a process down for the inlay plug but I think I got that nailed up now (maybe I should do a write up about how I do that).
This was in reference to 3D printing. I have never felt that Fusion gave me anything I was missing in terms of additive CAM, but now I’ll probably have to try it…ugh.
