Hello to the room!
My name is Chris. Please allow me to tell a little about myself. I am new to CNC Machining by about one year.
My background:
25 years ago, I went to a machining school in the navy. No, I am not a machinist mate. It was a school I attended for other reasons. I learned what I needed and have applied the knowledge over the years but I am not a machinist in the sense of someone who has had formal training and years of experience eyeballing tolerances in the thousands.
I have 20 years of design experience on Inventor and AutoCAD.
My education is in construction engineering.
I have a small 3d printer which was surprisingly easy to learn.
I have taught myself the limited cnc skills I have through videos and general cartesian knowledge.
What I have:
ShopSabre Pro 408 with ATC and a 30k spindle
Vcarve Pro (love hate relationship here)
WinCnc Controller
My problem:
I purchased this machine out of necessity for my manufacturing business. I work with plastics building concrete forms. I have over 1300 parts that I machine on a regular basis. My parts are relatively simple. Most of them are 2 dimensional with the exception of a tapered face on the edge and a pocket cut or dado at specific places on some of the parts. While Vcarve is great for getting your feet wet and for making some pretty cool art and signs it is not a manufacturing software. For instance, when I need to cut 100 XYZ Widgets I have no way of knowing that I cut them other than to count them. If I remove a few for a better fit or have to add other smaller parts to maximize my sheet of plastic I have to then manually input them into another database of inventory. This is highly counterproductive not to mention error prone due to the human factor.
I have been searching for months to find a package that will nest my parts and then maximize my sheet by automatically pulling from a library of parts to use in between my main cut, allow me to tool path an individual part once and then utilize that work over and over without having to manipulate it and just as importantly export that information to QuickBooks or an excel spreadsheet to be tracked as parts in inventory. I am hoping to find a middle of the road package as far as price point. I know Autodesk has some good packages but they seem to be in the 20k range and they have more power than what I need.
If anyone has experience with this, I would greatly appreciate some guidance.
Thank you in advance!
Chris
My name is Chris. Please allow me to tell a little about myself. I am new to CNC Machining by about one year.
My background:
25 years ago, I went to a machining school in the navy. No, I am not a machinist mate. It was a school I attended for other reasons. I learned what I needed and have applied the knowledge over the years but I am not a machinist in the sense of someone who has had formal training and years of experience eyeballing tolerances in the thousands.
I have 20 years of design experience on Inventor and AutoCAD.
My education is in construction engineering.
I have a small 3d printer which was surprisingly easy to learn.
I have taught myself the limited cnc skills I have through videos and general cartesian knowledge.
What I have:
ShopSabre Pro 408 with ATC and a 30k spindle
Vcarve Pro (love hate relationship here)
WinCnc Controller
My problem:
I purchased this machine out of necessity for my manufacturing business. I work with plastics building concrete forms. I have over 1300 parts that I machine on a regular basis. My parts are relatively simple. Most of them are 2 dimensional with the exception of a tapered face on the edge and a pocket cut or dado at specific places on some of the parts. While Vcarve is great for getting your feet wet and for making some pretty cool art and signs it is not a manufacturing software. For instance, when I need to cut 100 XYZ Widgets I have no way of knowing that I cut them other than to count them. If I remove a few for a better fit or have to add other smaller parts to maximize my sheet of plastic I have to then manually input them into another database of inventory. This is highly counterproductive not to mention error prone due to the human factor.
I have been searching for months to find a package that will nest my parts and then maximize my sheet by automatically pulling from a library of parts to use in between my main cut, allow me to tool path an individual part once and then utilize that work over and over without having to manipulate it and just as importantly export that information to QuickBooks or an excel spreadsheet to be tracked as parts in inventory. I am hoping to find a middle of the road package as far as price point. I know Autodesk has some good packages but they seem to be in the 20k range and they have more power than what I need.
If anyone has experience with this, I would greatly appreciate some guidance.
Thank you in advance!
Chris
