[Question]

Hello there : )

A fresh member here, just registered to ask a few things on behalf of my father.
He’s a retired mechanical engineer, as a matter of fact an experienced veteran who worked as a system designer, RD chief, etc. for a couple of international companies back then. On the minus side English is not his strong suit (nor mine obviously) and he’s also a bit of shy when it comes to asking for help : )))

Well here’s the matter… He qucikly became bored about being retired and jumped into designing small parts for musical instruments. Well… for his old string instruments to be precise. And ended up with the idea of building an uber compact and super silent (errr silent part was an order coming from higher authorities, aka my mother) CNC mill.

He told me that it was enough to send the CAD drawings to the “other builing” if you needed them CNCed. Jokes aside, he has an indisputable command with the industry scale CNC processes but ironically only just a little when it downscaled to a… errr…. hobby level.
I told him to buy a small scalle machine and get away with it but he insisted of making his own.

So, in terms of software, what is the most streamlined way from designing in his favorite CAD software (being ?nventor) to have finished parts (CNC milled, and I underline the milled) in a garage envirenment?

I hope there’s a solution where he can run his upcoming CNC bench from within the Inventor. Or something closest to that.

Your comments will be highly appreciated : )

Warm regards

Q

[Question]

On the second thought I might have skipped some probably significant information.

Here, building a CNC bench is not a problem at all... he does/did that thousands of times.

Main issue is finding the most streamlined software solution that allows an easy “CAD drawing to CNC control” process. Preferably free and open source, or the cheapest.

[routalot]

I use Freecad because it is free and open source.It also has a post processor for my controller and can import some file formats that were created using other CAD software.It isn't the easiest or most intuitive piece of software and I have been helped by some of the videos on youtube.

[ger21]

Fusion 360 is free for personal use, with limited features.

[Question]

Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I’ve been using Freecad myself for some time and liking it. Never needed the CAM part (Path module?) though, thus never used it that way.
It seems one can design, let’s say, the milling process there, simulate it, and export the G code.
But I’m not sure if one can run the g-code within the Freecad to drive the motor controller card. I mean I’d still need a middleware such as LinuxCNC or mach3, right?
I wish I (dad) could control the motor controller hardware itself (via some kind of addon) from within the Freecad.

And about the Fusion 360… I watched a couple of videos and it seems (maybe I’m wrong) Fusion 360 can drive the motor controller circuit directly, i.e. there’s no need for LinuxCNC, mach3. Is that so?

Thanks again for the insights.

Q

[Question]

Oh well… I guess I just learned that the software that I mentioned as middleware is called a “post-processor”.

So LinuxCNC or mach3 is a “post-processor”, is this correct?

And Freecad or Fusion 360 doesn’t have a post processor built-in?

So, connecting a "motor driver card with an USB port" to the computer and driving that card from within the Freecad or Fusion is solely my wishful thinking o_0

Hmm : )