cnc training on project set up?

[eugene thomas]

I have latley been checking out maybe adding cnc router to my shop. wondering if any good you tube videos on the process of programing the cnc to make something. i found videos on inital set up of cnc but not really worried about that till have machine in my shop to set up. on side note. any good training person can go to thats in the wisconsin area?

thanks Eugene

[Bruce Page]

Eugene, a lot depends on what software you plan on using. I use Vectric’s Aspire to communicate with my machines OS, WinCNC. Vectric has numerous well done tutorial videos on the web that teach you the very basics, to advanced modeling.

[Keith Outten]

Eugene,

The two links below are to the training tutorial pages on Vectric's web site.

http://support.vectric.com/training-material/vcarve-pro

http://support.vectric.com/training-material-aspire
.

[Art Mann]

I want to strongly agree with Keith's advice. Even if you don't ultimately choose Vectric software, their free training videos are excellent at illustrating the capabilities of and methodology behind CAD/CAM software.

[Peter Odell]

I have the vcarve pro and it is so easy to use.

[Peter Swann]

It really depends on what you want to make. The Vectric stuff is as user-friendly as it gets for toolpathing, but very limited for design. Their videos are are excellent too. If you want total flexibility in the design world, I find Rhino to be excellent (and concomitantly more difficult to use). There are video courses in Rhino that are excellent, but not free. Make no mistake - nothing about this is easy. The CNC is a very precise, but fundamentally dumb, machine. It will implement your instructions perfectly, whether they are brilliant or catastrophically bad.

I've found that the CNC requires you to reconceive woodworking. The plan has to be perfect from the outset, or you wind up with ruined work. The materials are still real-world materials, and you have to account for the way they react to cutting forces, fixturing, and (especially if you're using hardwood) the sudden release of internal stresses. A CNC machine will work to tight tolerances that make you feel like a magician, but the materials don't always conform to such tight tolerances. This can be a headache when dealing with cuts to a precise depth, slight warps, etc. Unlike traditional wood working, you can't fix it as you go -- once you press start, you're pretty much committed to the plan. And errors that would have been completely forgivable in the traditional world (who really cares about a 1/64 error there?) can be ruinous when you design to .001 tolerances. Little defects that I once would have sanded out can no longer be fixed when my design doesn't allow for any variances. So you learn to demand (and receive) perfection from the machine, but it demands perfection from you too. I've gone through 10 hours of machining just to have a tiny problem in the last few seconds ruin the whole piece. But I've also created things that I couldn't have made in a million years with traditional tools.

All that said, once you get it right, the creative power is truly amazing and the results can be incredible.