Not only is this the first forum I’ve ever posted anything on, but I’ve also never used any of the programs that come with this awesome little burn table. I haven’t got mine yet because I’m in batch 2, but I’m hoping to get a little reassurance that this wont be too complicated. I mentioned on here earlier that I am a sheet metal worker by trade, but the shop that I work in is still in the stone age when it comes to technology. I’ve been watching all the videos about mach3 and fusion360. The more I watch, the more nervous I get about not being able to make this worth my time. I get a great deal on metal, so I figured this would be a tool to have in my garage! Is it possible to take a picture of something I see on the internet, and burn it out without spending hours and hours in front of a computer trying to design it from scratch? I have so many questions but I’m not really sure where to start? I hope to get some feedback about my sutuation… and thanks in advance. It seems like a really nice group of people on here!
When you are cutting it is a vector image. If you take something from the internet it will most likely not be a vector. So you will have to trace or re draw it. Drawing in 2D is easy. Its, a skill you acquire at a young age. Any thing you will draw is made up of a basic shape, line, or arc. The best advice… youtube Lars Christensen. Start with easy things around your house, measure and draw. Break everything down piece by piece. Don’t over think or complicate it. Working in a sheet metal shop you have a good understanding of blueprints. Take plans from work and redraw them.
Best of luck
We believe that anyone that is motivated to make parts on the CrossFire has the ability to learn how to draw parts and create cutting programs using Fusion 360. With that said, its a skill that takes a considerable investment of time to get the hang of. I personally have been using CAD for about 15 years and still find myself learning new skills.
We have put together a fairly sizeable library of tutorial videos on getting started with Fusion 360. Many folks have told us that before they started working through the tutorials they had never used CAD. Now they feel confident that they can draw pretty much any 2D object.
My recommendation is to download Fusion 360 and start working through our tutorial series. From there you will be in a much better position to decide if you’d like to purchase the CrossFire. We’re here to help!
It is. I deal with the same anxiety with my laser students. There are an awful lot of things available on the Internet that are in vector (drawings that are paths) vs image (drawings or pictures that are a vast series of dots to the computer) format. Those can be turned into F360 files pretty easily by importing them. Search Google for “vector” or “SVG” or “DXF” files. PDFs can also be vector files if saved correctly.
You can also take an dot or pixel based image file (bmp, jpg, png) and create a vector from that. There are a couple of free applications that can do that for you and turn it into a vector file that you can bring into F360. GIMP and Inkscape are a couple.
The biggest issue people new to design have is thinking in 3-D or trying to translate the 2-D thing they can draw with a pencil into a design in a 3-D design software like F360. There are a lot of tutorials and YouTube videos out there but they can be a bit overwhelming. I’d start with the ones here and then check out the ones that the Glowforge community have put together for laser users - those are 2-D oriented so skip some of the more confusing 3-D capabilities of F360 that lots of the other stuff include but new folks don’t know they can ignore when designing for 2-D. The Glowforge stuff was done by an employee of Autodesk who owns a Glowforge laser so they’re well done from a perspective of trying to get someone up to speed on 2-D design using F360.
But one thing I would suggest is that you get comfortable spending more time designing than cutting. You can do extraordinarily complex designs using CAD machines like the Crossfire because of the computer control of the motion paths but that just means you can get far more creative in your projects than you ever could with manual cutting.
Oh, one more thing - if you have a local Makerspace, check them out. They may not have a CNC plasma tool but they’re likely to have 3-D printers, laser cutters or CNC routers. Those all use the same design approach so they may have a few F360 folks as members who would be happy to help - especially if you let them cut something using the Crossfire sometime 
I feel better already! And thank you all for the quick responses! I can’t wait for my crossfire to show up! And I also can’t wait for more people on here to post some of the great projects they come up with. I know I’ll post pictures of almost everything I create. We make some amazing things at work with our 250 ton press brake and 3/8" shear… so this will be a little on the smaller side from what I’m used to. They have been talking about getting a 6’x12’ plasma table, but until then hopefully I can learn as much as possible with my own table to really stand out at work! Thanks again to everyone helping me out!
It all depends on how detailed the part is. With some software I have I can do an autotrace and if it’s a good black/white image it needs only a little touchup. Some stuff I trace by hand or design by hand. I’ve also had pieces that I had a file or did an auto trace then spent hours and hours fixing and cleaning things up.
Also there are some people that would be happy to draw parts for you for a few bucks. I’ve done this too a few times. Just get in and start to play around. If you get stuck on some stuff send me a pm and i’ll see if i can help you
Thank you very much!