Fusion360 CNC fast forward

Hello.
It’s been a while since I’ve tweaked the machining path in Fusion360 CNC, and I noticed that the fast-forwarding is not reflected at all.

I was making a repeat of a data post from last year, but suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore, so I checked and it seems that the free version of Fusion360 has a fixed feed rate.

What do you guys do for fast forwarding?
Have you cut ties with Fusion360?

Rotary Module…
Either way, I’m going to have to pay for it:(

What exactly are you referring to?
This: * Rapid moves: Rapid moves traverse long distances across large machines at significantly faster speeds than the cut feedrate. Higher end machines typically have longer distances to travel and faster rapid speeds, making this feature valuable to those in a commercial setting but unnecessary for personal use.

That one has been removed from the free for personal use version.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Fusion-360-Free-License-Changes.html

In my opinion Fusion 360 is still the best “free” tool available for a lot of machining options. 4-axis support is missing as wel indeed, so no good for the rotary module unfortunately.

@brvdboss

Hello.

I understand that a feature has been removed from the free version of Fusion360 for personal use.

The code for fast forward (G00) is not posted, which is a problem because it increases the processing time:(

I wanted to ask what everyone else is doing.

Dealing with it.
Not really much choice.
Not sure how much it actually slows things down.
Wish it didn’t but not paying for it.
-S

I think a regular expression would be able to detect the moves that should be converted to G0 moves. Haven’t played with it much, but should be possible. Just look for G1 moves occurring after an M5 and before and M3/4 and replace them with G0.

I can only do VisualBasic, but I think using regular expressions to determine G-code is a good way to go.

With that in mind, I took a look at the CNC code and found that all of the code posted by the Snapmaker-Fusion360 post-processor consisted of only G1 code.

Even fast-forward and evacuation are G1…

It may be a bad setting in Fusion360, but there is no way to tell with this:(

The only M5 from a Fusion file is at the very end.
G0 is on the first and last move commands.

I went and looked at some Fusion .cnc files I had from August that were before they changed. The old code has sets of 3 lines that start with G0 that have no speed (F command at the end.) The first is the retract height at current position. Second is move to next position. Third is lower at new position.
You probably would be able to use the retract height as your indicator of where to add G0, but I think I’d spend more time messing with gcode than I’d save just letting it run. At least less frustration and not having to worry about messing up the gcode and sending it crashing at full speed into my work piece.

If anyone wants to see the old code, I can post some.
-S

@sdj544
I think Autodesk has thought this through:(
I think they went to the trouble of spitting everything out in G1 and making it cumbersome.
It’s a limitation rule for free use, so we have to give up.

Even if I could create a conversion program to add G0 judging from the retract height, as you pointed out, I would still have to visually determine if I wanted to do a full speed crash or not.

This is time consuming and not productive for safety reasons.

Since machining speed = rapid traverse, it may not be a concern if the machining speed is fast enough!

For most of the items I do I don’t think it’s actually that big of a deal.
If I was doing a lot of pockets it would be one thing, but most of my paths are almost always in contact with the material.
There are some settings for some types of paths that have a choice of “both ways”
So like with parallel clearing it’s faster if it’s going back and forth and not picking up and always starting from one side. Even before the change this made a big difference as far as speed goes.

-S

Just having to deal with it, depending on the rotary module I may decide to upgrade but an alternative would be good this was already an expensive hobby it’s rapidly becoming a loss making company

If someone posts their fusion gcode I’d like to take a crack at it. Defeating software limitations is something of a hobby for me :stuck_out_tongue:

Hadn’t had a chance to play around with this but the solve for this is actually a lot simpler than I thought:

Basically just have to do a find and replace for the retract height and speeds.
-S

3 Likes

This video is great.
I was amazed at how easy it was to do!

I often do a lot of “fast forward” CNC machining, so this is very useful.

Thanks for sharing!