What is everyone's preferred CAM software

Hey guys, I’ve had my PRIMO for a while now and I’ve always wanted to figure out how to use FUSION360 as my primary CAM tool but have yet to figure out how to make it happen. All of my work so far has been done using ESTLCAM which has allowed me to produce some satisfying results (to me at least) I know there are other tools out there but I was wondering what everyone else seems to gravitate to as I’d like to try to learn something different for upcoming projects.

I paid for EstlCAM and never looked back, really. I use Fusion360, but have never even attempted to use it for CAM. Perhaps not a helpful answer…

The only limitation I have found with Estlcam is that it sometimes forgets to take into account the other side of the tool and can try to cut into the work on the side of the bit opposite of where it is calculating the path, when the other line is a different path than the one you are calculating. I have only run into this maybe twice, and made adjustments to my drawing to compensate for the issue.

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There is a significant learning curve associated with both the CAD and the CAM components of Fusion 360. I was using Fusion 360 for CAD for 3D printing, so I was inspired to make the CAM work for my MPCNC. Note that you can use Fusion 360 for CAD and then take the resulting files and use Estlcam for the CAM. I frequently use Fusion 360 for creating DXF files that are then used in Lightburn for laser work.

As for Fusion 360 CAM, this tutorial is the first one I used. With significant interface changes in Fusion 360, the tutorial is dated, but there are some points in the video that really helped me. For example, the use of the cloud library for the storage of tools, and the fact that, by default, stock is created with extra height.

The Product Design Online YouTube channel is particularly beginner friendly, and he as starting some CNC videos when I last watched his content.

Winston Moy’s has a maker channel focusing on CNC machines. He uses Fusion 360 for many of his projects and outlines the CAM toolpaths and settings. I found his early projects helpful for understanding Fusion 360 CAM. In his later projects, he uses CAM in sophisticated ways that are beyond my abilities.

The NYC CNC channel has some helpful videos. They really vary in complexity and applicability to the MPCNC, but it is worth scanning some of them.

Lars Christensen channel will be really dated at this point, but he has a few CAM tutorials that I found helpful.

You will need a postprocessor for Fusion 360. The latest can be found here.

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I personally use a paid version of ESTLCAM.
I have recently replaced my MPCNC primo with a printnc (sorry Ryan Z) and I still use ESTLCAM for the the CAM with great results on that as well.

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I may as well chuck in my limited experience as I’m hopefully about to get my primo running again and cutting instead of drawing and pretending to cut :slightly_smiling_face: (I haven’t used it for 12 months)

I’ve tried Estlcam and Fusion for CAM and found Estlcam to be far easier and simpler to use, however I’ll probably spend more time learning Fusion as I’m planning to eventually get a CNC mill.

One thing I’ve thought of is since the free version of Fusion no longer exports DXF files I’m not sure how to get from Fusion to Estlcam?

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This is not true. The free version does export DXF files. Right click on any sketch and select “Save as DXF.”

My original sketches tend to have a lot of construction lines, or circles and curves that are only partially part of the final part. This can be a mess when exported to Lightburn, so my process is to use an original sketch for a extrude in Fusion 360. I then create a new sketch and project the extruded body to a new sketch. The new sketch has minimal and clean lines for exporting as a DXF. When projecting the body to a sketch, I have “Projection Link” checked. This means if I go back and rework the original sketch, those changes are propagated to the body and to the clean sketch for export.

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Ah, I didnt know that was possible. I’ve always used File>Export for STL and DXF exports and thats where the DXF option was greyed out when the licence terms were altered.

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Exporting a whole project as DXF is a bit strange given how most people use DXF files. That is, DXF files are used for exporting 2D data, and a Fusion 360 file is typically composed of 3D models. Some time ago, I did a bit of research into the DXF file format. It turns out that it does support 3D data, so I suspect exporting a whole project saves a 3D DXF representation of the models. I suspect there would be issues using that form of a DXF in Estlcam, plus the default projection might not represent the view you want in Estlcam.

Anyway, for me, the process I outlined in my last post works exceedingly well for my needs. The only problem I have is that the scaling for importing DXF files into Fusion 360 is always wrong, and not by an amount that makes sense. It is straight forward to calculate a scaling factor and resize the drawing, but it is a pain.

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My preference is FreeCAD - fully featured open source CAD/CAM at a price you can’t beat.

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I’m surprised no one mentioned kiri:moto. It uses stls, but doesn’t always follow contours like estlcam does with stls.

But FWIW, I use estlcam, mostly.

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+1 for Estlcam. Bought it, and run its firmware on my board.

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Wow, I am genuinely surprised. I had fully expected to hear at least a few cam software names thrown out that I hadn’t heard of before. I’m pretty well versed with ESTLCAM as well and I can do just about everything I want to with it (as I bought it pretty shortly after getting my CNC running) but at least I feel better still using it knowing so many others are sticking with it too. I think the big reason I want to switch over to F360 is that I use F360 as my primary modeling software and it seems more logical to just stick with it throughout the rest of the process. I GREATLY appreciate all the links @robertbu, I’ll be using that to hopefully get myself set up to complete the entire process within F360.

There’s a couple in this article that haven’t been mentioned - perhaps some you hadn’t heard of:

Edit - should say that the ones I’ve used are F360, FreeCAD (preferred), and Estlcam. I’ve also played with creating paths in Kiri:Moto/CAMlab, LinuxCNC, and some other paid program’s demo versions. I prefer the visualizations/simulations of F360, FreeCAD, and LinuxCNC - in that order. CAMotics simulation looks a lot like LinuxCNC.

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I use Vetric Vcarve pro and like it very much before that i used inkscape and estlcam. Both work well just prefer the all in one solution of V-carve Pro. My primo is setup with grbl 1.1h but there is a post processor for marlin avaliable.

It is going to come down to what your needs are, for most of what I do F360 is my choice, for you maybe EStlCAM or one of the others will be better for you.

I am very new but have used estlcam, I am trying to learn the free cad paths feature.
I use freecad for my cad, it’s open source so you don’t have to worry about it changing a bunch. Take a look over the years at all the “free” things fusion 360 has changed. And I bet they keep changing for a hobbyist I would way rather support a open source setup. The freecad wiki is great and all the tutorials are amazing. I tried fusion 360 multiple times over the years and didn’t like it.

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Like and appreciate open source, and this discussion. Will try out Freecad because of this discussion.

Am relatively new here, ~6mths, has EstlCam changed much recently, being actively developed? Looks like EstlCam is ~100k lines of VB .NET, with german named class/variable types. I appreciate EstlCam is a sold to help compensate the author for the significant time they’ve invested. Curious if anyone here has collaborated with the author to help fix/add some features?

@robertbu, cheers for this, really helpful, tried this yesterday. Tried OpenScad and some other options, but keep gravitating back to Fusion 360 free for modeling and complex CAM. Am mostly using EstlCam, because am doing mostly simpler CAM. Am also using @jamiek’s G-Code Test Pattern Generator for some specific scenarios (e.g. surfacing).

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Here’s a series of freecad tutorials as well as a mini-tutorial I wrote on generating paths for cnc

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I recall the EstlCam developer being active on these forums a while back working with folks to answer questions and resolve issues. Not sure if he’s posted recently.

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I have been using Fusion 360 with the FlyFisher Post Processor and then export that that through to a pi running the CNC.JS available here: GitHub - jeffeb3/v1pi: Preconfigured PI useful for users of the V1Engineering machines.

I find that workflow pretty robust and it is all free.

Fusion 360 is actually pretty easy to learn from online tutorials. This design skill is also transportable to other similar software.

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