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Anyone know anything about CNC machines (bonus points for 3d printer knowledge too)...
I want to buy a metal-capable CNC as well as a 3D printer to supplement it. Mostly to do random projects. But could use advice on what to purchase.
I am also curious about the software side, ideally id like to get a CNC that is easy to work with from a software level and bonus points if i could somehow use the same software to design for both CNC and 3d printer since parts for any particular project are likely to come from both.
@freemo Fusion 360 will generate STLs for slicing as well as run CAM for CNC. It's also very easy to use (by comparison!) and has a free tier.
@PCOWandre I was looking at fusion 360 and played witht he free tier. It looked awesome and indeed seemed to be nice and easy to use.
My issue with choosing that is that anything i design will be open-source. The free-tier however is really just a long-lasting free trial of 1 year and they dont seem to offer a truely free (as in perpetually free tier). So while I could accept a non-open source product the lack of a perpetual free tier looks like a deal breaker to me.
I can afford to pay for it, but if im doing open-source i want to ensure the tools i use are free and accessible to others who wish to contribute. So this is the only reason I might have to rule out fusion 360 even though otherwise I'd agree its the top choice.
@freemo It isn't a one-year trial, it is a free tier. Yes, obviously they could take that away in the future. I've been using it for three years now.
I get the open source desire, but the tools just aren't there for my workflow. OpenSCAD is great, but for a lot of the stuff I design I really want to kick the idea around visually. FreeCAD might have been more appealing if using it didn't involve un-learning a lot of F360 behaviour. It also just felt dog-slow and didn't want to play ball with the spacemouse.
F360 will export in standard formats like STEP so you're not absolutely locked-in.
I am not seeing anything about a free tier here:
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/pricing
If I can find the truely free tier you speak of I might be ok with it not being opensource.. All I know is when i looked i dont see it and the "free" tier I was able to get and currently have explicitly stated it was only granted for a year.
@freemo You renew your free access at the end of each year.
@PCOWandre Ahhh ok, well that makes more sense. If that is the case it **might** be acceptable... but its still hairy for me because if they change that policy at any time I could have a huge collection of projects that all of a sudden are inaccessible without paying a huge fee.
If this were desktop software that might not even be a big deal because if they stopped offering a free tier you could always just use an older version. But it is web based, and I suspect this is part of the reason. So if they pull the free tier at any point you either need to pay or instantly get locked out of everything you ever made (and the community too)... thats a big gamble, it is hard to predict where that will go in 5 years time for example.
@PCOWandre There is also the fact that the free tier requires the work to be non-commercial... So im not sure how that would play out if someonewanted to contribute to an open-source project and they were using that open-source project commercially to make a product they actually sell (like an open-source enclosure they use on a paid product).
well that is actually really cool... might just convince me to try blender afterall.
