Cad Cam

I am working on a table top mill conversion 3 axis and yes windows os jumps4 videos are awesome just watched the first 2 and am working on the next already loaded up the emachine cam not as complex as master cam or auto cad but I like it so far it's simple and easy to use learning a lot from jumps4 videos strong recommend.
Side note the master cam and auto cad do have student versions but they don't give all the options you can draw they limit thru the license what you can do and can't
 
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"Brav65, look into the education versions of Autocad and Solidworks for the CAD component. These are normally very expensive but both offer significant discounts for students and are widely used in schools. As for CAM there might be EDU discounts for the major players here as well."

I will reach out to the teacher who is running the summer program my son is going to attend. Thanks for the heads up!
 
My son uses the education version of Autocad 2012 and the only thing that I can find that it does is every drawing has a watermark that is was produced by the education version.
 
Pennsylvania college of technology has the 2015 version there are some work around but there is no way unless you use a college PC to get the g code but that only gets me a few more weeks then no more pc to copy from and the student versions are only good while your in school you might fudge the dates a little but they check them and if the school drops you off the current list they suspend your access
 
There is a new CAD program being produced by the writers of Solidworks - starting again from scratch. It is FREE, works in a browser so can be run on almost any Mac PC tablet or phone. It is in limited beta release so is very early days. In 3 weeks I have taught myself parametric CAD and produced models of the front wheels and axles of the 2"/foot traction engine I am building. Full version free for five or less models, pay money if you are going to design a new airliner.
Look up "OnShape".
 
Is cad/cam software absolutely needed? A calculator, machinist handbook and some trig will allow you to do just about everything. G-codes, well that's easy enough. Most of them are not used regularly anyways.
 
Both CAD and CAM are not absolutely needed. They are both a way of reducing the time it takes and the mistakes made in manual work. For that mater, why use CNC at all. There is nothing that can be done on a CNC that can not be done on a manual machine. As I once saw posted here, we sent people to moon without using CNC. However, if you want to spend your time being creative and making parts instead of doing trig and writing lines of code, then you might find that CAD (for drawing) and CAM for G-CODE development are worth the trouble to learn.

Edit: I should also add that is has a lot to do with the complexity of what you want to accomplish. I have hand coded a number of things, like drilling a of holes or facing a part to a specific z height. Much faster than using my CAM system to do this. But for times where there are multiple operations and complex geometry, I would rather spend my time learning how to make BobCAD generate the GCode than writing the Gcode directly.
 
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I haven't used the CAM part of my CAD/CAM software in a very long time because I don't have CNC here at home. But I use the CAD part to draw assemblies to make sure everything will fit together properly. Then I can just print each part with dimensions so I don't have to keep trying to fit things. I think if I had to generate a program for CNC it would take me a while because I forgot most of the stuff for that. I have a sketch saved of both my lathe and mill so that if I want to add or change something I don't have to keep going back and measuring everything.
 
I must be old fashioned. (doesn't surprise me)

I learned G codes back in the early 90s, I could stand at my machine, with a print in one hand and punch in a 3D program to make the part on the print. I had a number of tools set up and had taught the machine the dimensions, speeds and feeds for each tool. If I had a CNC machine now, that's how I'd do it.
T1 G 0 X 0 Y 0 Z.5
G0 Z.o1
G81 Z-.25 (center drill)
G80
G0 z5
T2

Etc.
 
Bredenhoft, I have great respect for you and others with the skill and attention to detail to do what you describe. For me an example was when I needed to mill a circular pocket in the softjaws of my vice to hold a part for a future operation. It took me less than 5 min to draw a circle and define the parameters needed for Bobcad to generate the Gcode. I know that if I tried to do that manually, I would get my tool offsets backwards or my arc dimensions wrong and mess up the part. The other advantage is that I could use the simulator to be sure that I did not do something stupid before I actually ran the code on the mill.

Know that I am not trying to say that doing it manualy is bad or wrong. If you can do it, go for it and save a few hundred $. The rest of us use CAM. :)
 
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