Learning Fusion 360 CAM Workspace

Hi everyone, my name is Carlos and Im from California studying at Norco College. This year I wanted to get into CNC machining, it’s a great skill to have in the engineering field and luckily enough, I have plenty of resources provided by the Fusion 360 team and the internet to get started. The main resource I used was directly from Autodesk, If you go onto their website and find the resources tab they have a wide array of learning tools for you. If you click on self-passed learning you will find the best way to learn something new for Fusion 360. These are basically courses designed by the official fusion 360 team to learn how to use Fusion like a professional and what’s crazy is that its FREE. I've always wondered why more people don’t take advantage of it, and I feel its because not many people know it exist but now you do. I’ll be showing a practice file from the “Milling Basics” course.

All you need to learn Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) is a device that can run Autodesk Fusion 360 and an internet connection for your online resources.

-Fusion 360

-A Device (Laptop or PC)

-Internet Connection

These resources:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/courses/AP-INTRODUCTION-OVERVIEW

https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/courses/

CAM Basics youtube videos:

https://youtu.be/VPMvnzmuTOw

https://youtu.be/Do_C_NLH5sw

Learn the Engrave tool: https://youtu.be/uURKCrErYSM

2D Milling operations in Fusion 360 are basically planar/flat operations, unlike 3D Milling which is used to mill curved surfaces where the tool head moves in the XYZ simultaneously (non-planar). Today ill go over 2D Milling since its more related to what I’m trying to accomplish.

• On your left you have the SETUP tool this is where you define your CNC machine, Stock size/raw material, and also your parts orientation.
• Where it says 2D Tools you will find most of your operations for planar milling such as Face, Adapting clearing, Contour, and pocket.
• On the top, you can see that you could choose a manufacturing process, the most common ones are Basic milling and CNC Turning.

Most of your 2D Milling tools will have a design prompt similar to the one above, each tab has a different purpose. Dont be overwhelmed will all the editing boxes you will only need a few for simply Milling projects.

• The TOOL tab is where you obviously choose your tool and "feeds and speeds" (this depends on your machine and tool).
• GEOMETRY is where you define what areas your cuts are bound, you select only the areas where you want to cut. If there is blue marking on areas you don't want to be cut, re-establish your contours because it will think its okay to cut through those areas.
• CLEARANCE HEIGHT is very important you want the bottom height to be at the deepest level of your cut anything below will cut area you dont want. This is where i had the most errors, so double-check your heights are correct. If you dont know what a certain edit box does, hover over the box with your courser and a dialogue box should appear that explains what it does.
• PASSES determine how many times you want your tool to dig into you material. More passes means a slower process but it's safer for your, tools, part and machine.
• LINKING involves your CNC movements and i almost never have to edit anything is this tab as Fusion does an excellent job for the optimal movements and connections.

My first attempts navigating the CAM workspace weren't, how should i put it "successful." But I used the Fusion 360 Self-Paced Learning Guides and it was so much easier process following with the video and the sample project. The sample project is the one above.

I wanted to make something with plenty of geometry to actually mill and when thought of crisp milled edges I immediately thought of sewer caps even though there not machined parts. I added the Fusion 360 logo in the center for some pizazzs. I used the 2D Face tool, and mostly 2D adaptive clearing.

I wanted to do CNC operations but I dont have the money to buy one. Then i realized that a 3D printer has all the right components to become a CNC except for the router, BUT WAIT i had a Dremel (Good enough). Now I had to start the conversion process wich wasn't as easy as i thought. To change the hardware on my 3D printer i had to upload new firmware but my printer (Cr-10) is an older model that doesn't come with a bootloader, which is required to upload the firmware. So although the video above looks quite simple, I had to open it up and connect an Arduino and flash a bootloader. The video is me having trouble converting the Marlen software to CNC compatible. But all in all, it was a learning experience I'll never regret, now I know all these fancy terms (bootloader, firmware, Arduino, flash. etc)

The video that I followed to convert to CNC is linked here: https://youtu.be/TQZwTac1Cks

I had alot of fun getting to learn CAM, I've always wanted to do so and this competition gave me the incentive to finally do it. Thanks to everyone at Instructables and the Autodesk Fusion 360 Team. Have a wonderful day!