Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

All things related to the Centroid Acorn CNC Controller

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Muzzer
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by Muzzer »

GBCues wrote: Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:47 am Hi Mike,
I took a look at the FreeCad website. I was interested in what CAM functions were included. I found references to 3D printing, LinuxCNC, and grbl, and how you might go about creating your own post processor, but no other posts built in.
Am I missing something?
CAM is one of the great values in Fusion360
I'm committed to Fusion for a year, but always interested in what other packages offer.
Thanks
Gary
Freecad has a post for Centroid built in. That's handy, as the post is written in Python and I'm too old and crusty to be able to get my head around it. I can just about cope with the Javascript used in Fusion 360.
https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Path_Post

I may have to get involved with FreeCAD if it turns out that simultaneous 4th axis is not included in the paid Fusion. I may take my hands off my eyes finally and try to understand the final offer. Last time it was as clear as mud on 4th axis.

In general terms, I wouldn't have a problem paying for Fusion if decent 4th axis is there. But they seem to have made a disaster of this latest move.
GBCues
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by GBCues »

Muzzer, thanks for the link - I wandered through FreeCAD's website for a while, but never came across this list of posts. I'm going to assume it is a milling post - I have both a gantry router (milling) and a lathe.
FWIW, I paid the $297. I ran the simulation on one of my 4-axis programs and it appeared to run correctly. Then I posted out the G-Code using Swissi's updated mill post processor and life seems good. Of course, YMMV.
Thanks for the info and the link.
Gary
tkbot47
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by tkbot47 »

Are we talking about the same thing here? Fusion 360 subscription still requires the paid for extension for true rotary 4th axis module access, whereas cylindrical wrapping of 2D information for 4th axis machining seems to be still supported. This would seem to support machining of cylindrical symmetric figures to be machined without the extension, but asymmetric models would require the rotary axis extension. Am I reading this wrong?
GBCues
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by GBCues »

I am only using "cylindrical wrapping of 2D information". The paid-for extension would still be necessary. Sorry for any misdirection
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by tkbot47 »

I use DeskProto, a 3D CAM software package, for rotary 4th axis machining on a CNC mill/router. It offers a very reasonable price for a hobby use perpetual license, fully supports 4th axis machining, and has Centroid post processors. Support from the vendor is also quite good via their forum.
Muzzer
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by Muzzer »

Yes, Deskproto looks like one option but IIRC, you can't try the 4th axis without paying for it. May have misunderstood but that was my reading. Have you any pics or vids showing what you did with it?

The FreeCAD 4th axis looks to be indexed ie non simultaneous - and embryonic. Worth a look when I have time.
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by tkbot47 »

Muzzer wrote: Sat Oct 03, 2020 11:06 am Yes, Deskproto looks like one option but IIRC, you can't try the 4th axis without paying for it. May have misunderstood but that was my reading. Have you any pics or vids showing what you did with it?

The FreeCAD 4th axis looks to be indexed ie non simultaneous - and embryonic. Worth a look when I have time.
Muzzer,
I own a copy of MultiAxis Deskproto, and my recollection is that there was a 30 day trial for that version. I ran the Venus model on my rotary 4th axis on my Shopbot (pre Acorn conversion) and it came out well (I have a pic somewhere). I haven't yet run a 4th axis rotary model on it now that I've converted to Acorn, but they do have a Centroid PP that supports A (4th) and B (5th) axis, and is easily modifiable. I think the Multiaxis hobby version is about 248 Euro, or about $290 for a perpetual license. Check the forum out - Lex is pretty responsive and helpful. They also just came out with Mac and Linux versions as well, I believe.

I've come to not be a fan of Freecad......I usually run into a bunch of bugs, and the workflow never seemed very clear to me.
Muzzer
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by Muzzer »

Yes, I played with FreeCAD after using Solid Edge and Solidworks at work but was put off by the bugs. Then I got involved in beta testing Onshape. Then along came Fusion and things got really interesting due to the CAM content. With Onshape you had to pay for full fat CAM add-ins which I couldn't afford. I get the feeling that the team creating FreeCAD are closer to programmers than machine operators, which isn't a surprise surely. It might seem churlish to sound critical but often when creating tutorials, they don't seem to be able to choose sensible parameters (feeds, stepovers, heights etc) or generate the sort of toolpath I'd be expecting.

What we haven't mentioned here is that the Centroid post in Fusion doesn't support (simultaneous) multiaxis work anyway. IF you look in the post, it checks for multiaxis content and says something like "multiaxis not supported" if it finds any. Indexed 4th axis is a simpler proposition.

Not sure who created the Centroid post or what base post is was made from but presumably they lacked the ability or budget to understand and/or create that part of the post. Which is a pity given that Acorn is a 4 axis controller. The post for my Newker controller (based on Fanuc) doesn't have that limitation but it's rather academic now after the cunning stunt from the Fusion team.

I can't justify coughing up for the paid version, given the marginal difference (to me) between the 2 options. I place no value on shiny stuff like motion, FEA, rendering etc which they seem to think people will want to pay top dollar for. As for the removal of rapids, that's like removing the saddle on a bike out of spite. Hopefully it will be possible to edit them back in but I don't expect they will have made it that simple, as there are possibly hundreds or thousands in a large file.

Transferring models in step format isn't much use really, as you lose all the parameters and apart from direct editing, there's not much you can do with them. In practice, when faced with recreating work from previous applications, I've ended up simply exporting the designs as fully dimensioned 2D drawings and recreating them from there. Doesn't really take long but gives you full parametric models to work with.
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by Nigelo »

Would Vectric's Vcarve Pro or Aspire be a reasonable alternative to Fusion 360 for work on both Precision Mill and a Router or am I trying to compare Apples with Pears?
"You can lead a horse to water but you cannot force it to drink"
Hope this helps
Nigel
Muzzer
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Re: Fusion 360 Personal Edition Changes Coming Oct 1

Post by Muzzer »

Incidentally, I got an email reply from Lex (owner of Deskproto) confirming that full simultaneous 4th axis operation is included in the trial version of Deskproto. The limitation is that an embossed watermark effect is created on work created by the trial version. There doesn't seem to be a time limit as such. This should allow a reasonable trial of the features before you decide whether or not to purchase.
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