Fusion 360 Cam

Groundhog

Groundhog

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Anyone have any real world experience with Fusion 360 CAM?

I have been using TurboCad 18 and Visual Mill 2012 to make the posts to run my Syil X4+ using Mach3 and MachStdMill screen set. All of these programs are fairly old and in need of updating. However, updates are more expensive than I can afford.

So, seeing that many people have using/trying Fusion 360, I have been messing around with it. I haven't gotten to the point of trying any milling operations yet. I would rather not go through the learning & experimenting processes only to find out down the road that the CAM doesn't work so good on anything but the basics.

So, I am hoping for some input on the CAM side of Fusion 360. Good or bad.

Thanks!
 
Check out the Mach support forum. I did a quick view and found several discussions on this subject.

Tom S.
 
I JUST started using it too so I'd be interested if you find anything out - seems like a great program so far
 
I just tried the CAM out last weekend. I've been using the CAD part of it for a few months but just now needed to make a part. I will give my take on it based on what I used before, which is Turbocad 16s CAM plugin. Fusions 360 CAM is much more full featured than the Tubocad, with many more options and capabilities. It took me a bit to figure it out (and a wrecked 1/2" carbide endmill), but I think it will rapidly become my go to CAM package. So far I've only made one part with it, so I can't say too much, and my only other experience is with the Turbocad CAM plugin, so I can't give a comparison to other packages. Considering how much more functionality it has than many of it's low end competitors, and the fact that it is free for hobby use, I expect it to gain popularity among the hobbyist community quickly. I'm sure not going to buy another version of Turbocad.
 
The CAM program that comes with Fusion360 is HSMWorks for solidworks. Autodesk bought HSMWorks a while back and integrated it into fusion. I've used HSMW a fair amount (the free 2d version) and have had great success with it. I've also played around with Fusion a bit as well, and it looks to be exactly the same but with turning and 3d capabilities. HSMW has a little feature where if you hover over the box it comes up with a little pictorial box that shows you what that setting does. I'm fairly sure Fuson does the same thing, so your learning curve shouldn't be too bad.

Fusion360 is free so it's hard to beat that price point with such capabilities.
 
I haven't used Fusion but I use Inventor/Inventor HSM and I'm pretty sure they're the same thing (for this conversation). I have been doing CAD for 15 years but have just started to explore the CAM side. HSM has been pretty darn easy to learn! It might take a while up front to get the tool library customized.

Watch youtube and keep your eye out for webinars - that's where you can learn little tricks.
 
For my input- I Love fusion 360 to date. I did post in the drill press forum of my recent 3d printer (taz6) for the shop and we're going w/ Fusion 360 for the STL /Maker print setups built into Fusion 360. To get me started, I have been going thru the NY-CNC videos call "fusion fridays" on Youtube. Not a true class-room setting, but it got me setup on my first part POC. Fun and I agree w/ the posts about Fusion 360 becoming my goto CAM setup. Extremely powerful. The Ny-CNC vids on youtube also cover the CAM functionality of the product also.
Best,
JJ
My first part :
CamPOC1.jpg
 
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