cannibal wrote:Hello,
I am new to the forum but I was curious;
What do you wish you knew about when you first started using a CNC?
I was completely new to the whole CNC router thing before I jumped into the queue for my SO3 landed which ultimately landed at the door early last summer. To be honest, from the day I put down the money (with no experience whatsoever), to the day it arrived at the door, I was able to learn everything I needed to know to get me to where I am now. That includes the Super-PID, metal base, dust collection, bits, speeds & feeds, CAD/CAM, clamping. EVERYTHING you need to get well into the CNC router machining is accessible through this forum and/or its members. Everything!
But there is always something I guess and in my case, it was not finding my way around to Fusion 360 earlier in the process. I tried and paid for a number of different CAD and CAM programs, all of which worked just fine. But investing the time required to get a bit of a feel for Fusion 360 for the simplistic hobbist type CNC'g I do would have been nice to get into earlier and saved myself a few bucks.
All that said, you shouldn't think the knowledge comes to you through osmosis and there is a fair bit of knowledge to acquire. You have to comb tons of threads where you will start to pickup up the pieces of workflow, etc, then dig in even deeper until it all starts to make sense. Then, fire up the machine and crash the spindle into the bed a few times to teach yourself that there is still more to learn.
