Learning to program a CNC is a machining rite of passage. But it’s not always super easy, right?
Well, here’s one idea picked up from a shop owner we interviewed for this article on starting your own CNC shop: Play around with Autodesk’s Fusion 360. The shop actually ended up moving to Fusion 360 because the price point was more economical than its initial programming software.
It does take some time. “There was a learning curve—and we broke tools in the programming on simple plunging and spot drilling,” says Duane Spurling, owner of Rocket Machining & Design.
Autodesk offers a free trial, which is an excellent way to play around with software on a machine.
Some machinists advise learning the hard way as you do in manual machining: Make mistakes and learn from them. But there are online tutorials and videos that can help too.
This one, billed as a Fusion 360 Tutorial for Absolute Beginners, gets major thumbs up (plus, Lars has lots more on the CAD/CAM tool if you want to take a dip).
Or you can go down a Fusion 360 wormhole on NYC|CNC’s YouTube channel too. Here’s another Fusion 360 for beginners video—this one is from the NYC|CNC channel. We really liked it because the pace is reasonable for, well, beginners:
What have you found to be the most useful in learning Fusion 360?