Fusion 360 design directly to laser cutters?

Laser
#1

Now that I’ve become better at designing in Fusion 360, I’m wanting to use it to output directly to the various tools we have available at the Makerspace. (Using RDworks now feels like 1998)

However, I haven’t been able to find any instructions for doing that, besides saving a sketch as a .dxf and importing it in RDWorks for cutting on the laser cutter. This often takes a lot of rework, because a body or component might not look like the original sketch anymore.

It seems that Fusion 360 IS designed to output directly to various laser cutters if the correct files/settings are used. There are plenty of examples on YouTube of people doing this with their laser cutters, but none on a Thunder laser. Is this just an issue with the Thunder that they only work with RDWorks? (no info on the Thunder web site either)

Has anyone figured out how to go from Fusion 360 directly to OUR laser cutters?

Same goes for the HAAS, Plasma Cutter, Multicam, 3D printers, and shapeoko…

Here’s an old thread where this came up before: (yes, I searched)
https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/t/design-software-for-our-tools/5225/27

We should be able to go directly from design to manufacture with our software and tools!

I’d love to collaborate with anyone else who’d like to see this work!

3 Likes
#2

I found something that makes the process of exporting a face to a DXF file a bit easier because you can select the face of a body and export directly to DXF.
It is an Add-in called “DXF4Laser” and after installing and testing, it seems to work so far.

From Fusion 360, select “Fusion 360 App Store” from the Add-ins menu. (or go here: [https://apps.autodesk.com/en])
Type “DXF4Laser” in the search box.
Download and install the add-in. (be sure to start it)

EDIT:
There’s also an Autodesk DXF Post file available too, but I have to figure out how to use the CAM module in Fusion 360 first…
Search for DXF here
another reference

It appears there might be another post file someone wrote to export DXF too… with a little documentation.
Surrey and Hampshire makerspace site…

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What design software?
#3

You just made everything possible for a project I need to start in order to launch a fundraiser for my friend of 15 yrs. Thank you good sir!

1 Like
#4

Nice job finding the DXF4Laser! I’ll check it out.

Like you, I’ve tried to standardize on Fusion 360 and use it on all the equipment. So far, only issue I’ve had is using a specific stencil font on the plasma cutter. After converting font to outline, still would not import correctly to plasma cam software. Ended up being resolved by taking the Fusion 360 DXF into Inkscape and then re-exporting as older DXF format.

@fedakkee has some great classes on using Fusion 360 with the Multicam

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#5

When you do the text, right click on it & select explode text. Then save the DXF. Your text should then import ok to Plasmacam.

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#6

I added this to the Tips And Tricks section of the Laser wiki.

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