Same thing goes for me.
Growing up on a small farm working on equipment, the mechanical stuff comes easy. Also, as pointed out in an earlier post, most mechanical parts are based on a standard of some sorts.
Even electrical isn't too much of a pain since everything is pretty much standardized, but roll into the world of electronics......nothing seems to be standardized.
Yes, at its root everything boils down to 1's & 0's, but what makes up the 1's & 0's is different with almost every program out there. Seems everything in the programming work is a never ending VHS vs Betamax battle. Learn this method, but it won't translate to this other one (which is the new standard for now until something newer comes along) so one is forced to relearn.
I'd love to learn CAD & CAM for the possibility of going CNC later on, but I'm 50 years old and didn't grow up with computers. I've learned some basic stuff through trial and error because of necessity for job related programs, but I didn't have to worry about crashing a couple thousand dollar home machine because I goofed.
Programmers use a different language that makes perfect sense to them, but is just greek to me and I don't speak greek. I've done countless searches and made inquiries on a miriad of different forums with little or no results. Simple things like those tossed around in this thread discussing various programs and their limitations. What limitations ??? Everyone seems to think "Well that's common knowledge". Well, it may be to those who have learned and used it, but to me.....no idea what you're talking about.
I run a nuclear power plant and have/could explain fission, fusion, thermodynamics, power factors, VARS, house curves, load line, neutron poisons, and on and on and on..., but most would just look at me with a blank stare because they have no understanding of the terminology or frame of reference to associate it to.
I wish there was a class close by that was convenient for me to attend with my goofy work schedule, but there isn't. Thus, I'm relying on the internet and books to try and figure it out on my own with most things I've found assuming that you have some base knowledge and understanding of how it all works to begin with. Nothing I've found explaind to the level a complete beginner can understnad.
If I've missed something available out there that would help me out, please let me know.
First you have to decide if your gonna go with a home brew cnc solution. If the answer is yes, then that'll narrow down the focus for software. There's probably 100 different ways to skin this cat.
As far as controller software goes, Mach3 controller software,seems to be very popular for home brew CNC, 3D milling and 2D cutting such as plasma and oy/acet. It's good to stick with a popular solution, since there's more information first hand experience floating around.
Sheetcam is also very popular to generate the g-code which is read by mach3.
So for my application , Plasma cutting. the design procedure goes something like this,
1) Design the part in CAD(autoCad, Turbocad, RhinoCad etc) , I can also draw art in( corel draw, Inkscape etc)or import artwork from the internet or scanner etc.
2) Export the file as a .dxf file to Sheetcam and design the tool paths in Sheetcam to cut the part,
3)Export that file as a .tap file(g-code) to Mach3, which is on the machine controllerPC.
4) set your zeros on the CNC machine and run the file in mach 3 to control our machine.
It took me a while just to figure out what to do and how to do it. I'm certainly no expert, I've just scratched the surface, but i figure, if i do enough of it and persevere, i'll get really good at it eventually.
Here's the bottom line. Don't expect to just push a button and make a part... that aint gonna happen. There's a lot of up front investment in machinery, learning software, time, building and tweaking. The payoff is that once you've paid your dues there, you'l be making some pretty amazing stuff. Once you've made one part you can just as easily repeat the process 100 times with very little extra investment.
These are just my methods to date...like i said there are many different ways to get the same job done, but i've found that sticking to one popular method helps out a lot when you need to ask a question.
Youtube is your friend. There are tutorials that helped me tremendously with the software. When i see it done in a video, it gives me the confidence to follow what they did and get something working. Working strictly from a manual makes me crosseyed and confused, but a manual in conjunction with some video and a little experimenting on my part gets me moving forward and learning.
Marcel
