Now that I have learned to use the software tools such as Fusion360 and Adobe illustrator, I am able to go quickly from design to finished product with minimum waste of time or materials.
This weekend, made a tray for Bathroom to hold toothbrushes etc…with draining holes and stainless steel hardware.
I remember the days of my youth when I was waiting for these tools to be available to use. I knew it would come but it has been very slow coming….
My observation today, is that the software has evolved well but the interface to the production machines such as the laser or the 3d printer are still very buggy or cumbersome. There is still a lot of progress to happen here.
For example in 2006, when I bought my first CNC the software was very DIY and reflected how the machine worked rather than how the human would want to interact with the machine.
An example of that would be: Assume you want to simply carve a circle in a material. The 2006 software would require you to provide “all” the parameters and would require you to calculate the offsets of the tools using a text editor and some G-Code.
Today it is better but still not great. You draw in Fusion to ensure precision in the drawing, export to illustrator to get an SVG or another file format that the CNC/Laser can understand, then provide parameters to the machine for cutting, then start cutting.
Still, I find the laser and amazing tool to go quickly from Design to Finished product…
