Hi all. I got a Crossfire Pro and Hypertherm 45XP with THC. I’m hoping to make a little side business out of this (signs and decorations mostly), but I guess you can call it a hobby for now. I do have a pretty good tech background so learning software (CAD/CAM) and making a business website shouldn’t be too bad.
So far I’ve mostly played around with Fusion 360 (about halfway through the 30 day trial). I couldn’t find the personal 1 year trial that had been talked about a lot in the past. I also played with Inkscape a little, but not Sheetcam yet. I’ll probably try Sheetcam when my Fusion 360 trial is over. I’ll decide which software to buy by the end of this year.
My hangup so far is getting all my text letters to cut from the inside instead of outside. As I do the 2D cutting settings in Fusion 360 CAM, there almost always seems to be some letters that cut on the outside instead of inside. In one cut I did, the exact same letter cut differently. So I guess I still have playing around to do with this stuff. It makes me wonder if Sheetcam will do a better job creating cut paths… Any tips would be appreciated.
And a silly question, do ya’ll save some of the smaller cutouts for possible future projects? I’ve put aside letters and other designs that get cut out of a sign thinking that maybe I’ll use them later for something else…
welcome to the forum…
anything to do with Fusion 360…just look in the Fusin 360 category…
one of our “esteemed” members…cough…cough… @TinWhisperer is the go to for anything conFusion360
Welcome I am in SW Michigan also!
When you select what you want to cut make sure you pay attention to the arrows. if you click on a arrow it will go from inside to outside. Maybe by some chance you are clinking on a arrow and don’t realize it.
You can see all these holes are cutting from the inside. Look at the circled one and see what happens when you click the arrow.
@Knick Thanks for the info. Sometimes the arrows do move from inside to out or vice versa. But sometimes when they are outside to start, they move (and change direction) when i click them but stay on the outside no matter what…
In fusion the best thing is to extrude it to a body as pictured above then when selecting the cut path you can click anywhere in the body and it will recognize if the paths are inside or outside all in one click. If you have multiple body’s or letters click the same plane box first. Fusion is very easy to work with once learned.
@Duhicky That’s one of things I must not be doing right. I was selecting each cut instead of extruding beforehand. @Knick That must have been what was going on because sometimes the arrow wouldn’t move to the inside of the letter as expected. I think it must have just been changing direction (counter-clockwise vs clockwise) but staying outside.
Some of the directions that I was following was the videos on Langmuir’s site. They are actually great videos to use as a starting point, but I need to dive more in to Youtube videos. Also, the video may be starting to get a little outdated as it appears to be an older version of the software…
