A beginner’s guide to CAM with Fusion 360
Fusion 360 presents a powerful and accessible CAD option for hobbyists, thanks to a (relatively) comprehensible user interface, an active user community, and free access for makers and students.
Fusion also includes strong support for computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), allowing you to take designs from conception to physical reality. Unfortunately, the CAM features are themselves quite complex, and if you are new to Fusion 360, you will find you have a second big hill to climb to render your model in wood or plastic or metal or foam.
This guide is a newbie’s intro to to CAM in Fusion 360, with a particular focus on creating 2D or 3D designs with a ShopBot.
The guide has a few goals:
- It offers a “just works” step-by-step set of instructions for getting from design to physical object using Fusion 360 and a ShopBot. Every major cutting operation is described in enough detail that you should be able to follow along and, fingers crossed, complete simple projects.
- It also includes enough troubleshooting tips and background information that you should become proficient in CAM as a side effect of reading through the notes and working through any problems that crop up.
- It outlines an approach to 3D machining that can help you manage the tradeoffs between time and quality.
Articles
Intro
CAM basics
Before you start
A couple of tweaks to your environment may save you some time and headaches down the road.
Feeds and speeds
2D machining
Creating setups
All CAM operations in Fusion are contained within a setup.
Overview of 2D operations and common settings
Most of Fusion’s cutting operations are organized in a common way, with settings broken into five thematic groups.
Pockets
Fusion provides two different types of pocketing operations: 2D pockets and adaptive clearing.
Contours
Slots
Tracing
Drilling
Simulating operations
Generating Gcode
3D machining
Differences between 2D and 3D machining
Overview of Fusion’s 3D cutting operations
Adaptive clearing (and pocket clearing)
Parallel
Contour (and ramp)
Scallop
Project
Everything else
Advanced topics
Prepping your model for milling — nesting and filleting
You can use add-ins to greatly speed the process of arranging your pieces for milling and adding dogbone fillets.
Rest machining — 2D and 3D
Estimating and reducing machining time
Installing and running Fusion add-ins
Add-ins take some of the pain away from Fusion’s “missing features.”
Further reading
Tutorials and other resources
And now a bit of fine print.
This guide assumes a basic proficiency with Fusion 360. If you’ve never fired up the program before, this isn’t the place to start. You should learn how to create models before jumping into CAM.
Further, this tutorial focuses almost exclusively on the “how” of CAM. It assumes you know what you want to do, and shows you the steps to take. But the guide won’t tell you how to sequence your cuts, choose a bit, choose a material, etc.
Finally, I am new to CAD and self-taught, so there may be things I’m doing weirdly, or inefficiently, or incorrectly. Hopefully my beginner’s perspective is useful to other beginners — this is more or less the tutorial I wish I’d had when starting out with CAM — but feedback is welcome.
