Something new

During the lockdown, I’ve noticed a lot of people on YouTube taking the opportunity to start projects. I did, too, of course, with the Cantilevered Knicknack Shelf. But I still don’t know when I’ll get the chance to actually install that — it’s in my dining room now.

But I had been saving up for while for something else, and with lots of enforced time at home I figured it was as good a time as any:

I finally bought a CNC Router. This one is a Next Wave Automation CNC Shark II, which I figured was the largest I could make space for. It’s the new home of my Porter-Cable 690 router, at least for now (I may swap it out if it becomes problematic). The 13″ x 25″ cutting area should be big enough for most things I would do (although I already have one idea that will have to get farmed out to a bigger machine).

Ordering this as things were shutting down had its downsides. The machine came in about a week, but with no router cradle. I called Next Wave Automation and they sent me a router cradle (another 6 days waiting), but they didn’t send the clamps or bolts. I called again and they overnighted me clamps and bolts … but the bolts were too short. I ended up risking a trip to Home Depot to get proper length bolts.

But once that drama was through, I finally had a working CNC Router to play with. I’ve only begun the process of learning its capabilities, but I had already been doing CAD drawings so I did have a head start — I thought.

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Not so much. Beware when watching YouTube videos, because they don’t always tell you that the features they are using are not in the base packages that come with the CNC machine. For instance, my machine came with VCarve Desktop, not VCarve Pro, so half the videos I watched on VCarve turned out to be things my software won’t do. And my Sketchup, since I didn’t pay $500 for it, won’t let me export drawings the way I was assured I could. Caveat emptor (or caveat viewer).

I did, as you can see, do some preliminary things. I installed a spoil board (yes, with nylon fasteners, though they’re far enough from the cutter that I didn’t really need to), surfaced it, my spoil board, and printed a 1″ x 1″ grid on it. I also used VCarve to cut out a couple of new push sticks for the table saw. But I quickly saw, as others have, that while VCarve Desktop is pretty slick at simple shapes and very good at making signs, it really isn’t much of a CAD package. And the Pro upgrade, which only partially addresses that, is $1500 on top of the $3000 machine. No thank you.

Instead, since I’m not doing this for any reason other than personal projects, I qualify for the Autodesk Fusion 360 free individual license. My son Adam mentioned Fusion, and uses a commercial license in his business, so it was easy to start there. And Fusion works really, really well. It is a much more complete CAD package than VCarve, but it does take a lot of time to learn even if you’re already using a different CAD program.

Fusion is also a good CAM package, directly producing the .TAP files that the CNC Shark uses (placed on a USB stick and fed into the controller, so my computer doesn’t have to reside in the dusty shop). But be warned, NWA does not provide a pre-processor for Fusion and doesn’t intend to — they really want you to buy VCarve Pro, apparently. I found a good pre-processor on the Internet, though, so I am able to work entirely in Fusion.

I haven’t nearly mastered Fusion yet, mind you, but I’ve been able to draw some of my previous projects (like the Child’s Rocker and a 12×15 cutting board) and make a few useful things for around the shop (like a zero-clearance tablesaw throat plate and of course some non-metallic hold-downs so I can get those metal clamps out of my tool path!). As I get better, I’ll tackle some more ambitious things. I envision this helping me make complex parts and patterns, not doing entire pieces on it, and I expect it to add a new dimension to projects.

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