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CNC Router course

TJScharp

Aluminum
Joined
Aug 6, 2011
Location
Alberta, Canada
I was trying to research if anyone in Canada offers a CNC table router course?
Haven’t found much so far, any help would be appreciated.
 
I work as a CNC router programmer and operator for a architectural products company. I would suggest just taking a class or two in a CAD based software or even just Illustrator. The tool pathing on these machines both hobbiest and commercial is pretty easy to pick up. Drawing and or thinking out the construction is where the time is.
 
I have been out of the education side of things for awhile now, so I am not current, but I think the only formal course work like what you are looking for would be at PSU (in Kansas). At PSU, we had 2 cnc classes, the first was to learn the software side of things, when I taught it, I based it around how I had learned things the hard way and tried to get them thinking about how to hold things so you could cut it, what tooling to use etc. The second class was to learn the machine(s) and apply the software to the machine. We had a 4 axis CR Onsrud and a 5 axis CR Onsrud, cnc panel saw and edgebander and now they also have a feed through vertical machining center. This was the sophmore and junior level courses with a furniture design class in the fall and furniture manufacturing in the spring of the senior year. These last two classes used the previous 3 years of coursework as a foundation to be able to use any of the processes to make the furniture, cnc being one of them.

I do not know of any courses outside of PSU and maybe the school I linked to earlier that would have it. There used to be a course in Atlanta at Georgia Tech, they had a program that had similar courses but I am not finding anything on them anymore. Their lab was based on machines that were on loan but still for sale by the machine builder so they could have a working demo lab.

Stiles, which is a large machinery dealer, may have some courses, they used to have an education branch. You'd have to go looking as I have not.

You may be stuck with trying to find a local manufacturer that has a router and see if you can learn from them somehow.
 
You should concentrate your efforts on finding a cam program that has good graphics representing the machining operations that you want to do. The cam program should output the proper g-codes to operate your cnc router. It then becomes a task of you learning how to set up your cnc router to use the program.
 
"CNC table router" Not sure if you mean a router small enough to sit on a table or a flat table router. I've owned several routers over the last 20 years. There are two sides to a router. Generating the information that controls the machine and setting up and running it. In theory it would be possible to input the code at the machine, directly as G code. Few people would want to do that so they use CAM software to turn their designs into code. The basics of running a router are fairly simple but to be really good at it requires a bit more knowledge that what button to push. There are free CADCAM programs available and some fairly cheap more elaborate ones. Google it. The production level ones get pricey!
 
As a CNC router designer, i advise you first learn about CAD software and get familiar about the cnc router parts and their functions.
 
Marc Adams School of Woodworking offers CNC classes. I purchased Vectric Aspire Software in December 2017 and installed it last January 2018. The User Group is a good community. You can use many design programs in CAD and find if you have compatibility with your CAM options. I really like Vectric's tutorials. They are available to view without owning software, and I think the software is very intuitive.

https://www.marcadams.com/workshop-index/

I met Randy Johnson at the Vectric User Group meeting and I would like to take his classes, but I've already made my travel plans for this year, so I'll continue to muddle at home. It really isn't too difficult, do simple things and build on the experience. I think Randy teaches in Indiana and Washington, there are other instructors in the US, and this assumes we are talking wood, not metals.



There are many, many different options; I recommend going to a woodworking show and talking to the people 'selling' to see if you like the community and the mfg's support. Do they have a live user group? There are many, many YouTube Videos on the subject, too.

My husband's employer is getting a large CNC delivered at work on Monday - you know the 6 figure kind of CNC, and I can't wait to see it! I'll have to get up really early one day so I can go drool on the new CNC.
I want to count / see the ATC options with my own eyes.
 








 
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