So today I start my journey to improve my CAM skills.  Being in the Autodesk channel for the last 2 decades I have heard about the various CAM products that were available as add ons to Inventor.  I am not going to mention them but there are many.

A few years back Autodesk acquired HSM. An add in to another prominent solid modelling package.

The initial acquisition saw HSM Express (2.5 axis machining) getting included for free with Inventor and the full HSM (5 axis machining) being a paid service.

With the arrival of the Collections you get all the bells and whistles that the full HSM has to offer, fully integrated into Inventor without any additional cost.  Fusion 360 has also adopted this technology and Autodesk are leaping forward at an advanced rate with their development of HSM.

So where to start??

I decided to start with the CAM in Fusion 360.  The reason is that many of the people I work with are using it solely for that!!  Why you ask? Doesn’t Fusion 360 come with some amazing modelling capabilities.  Generative design, sculpt (the old t-spline technology).

Well yes it does but many of these companies already have their own CAD software.  The advantage that they have with Fusion is two-fold.

One is it has oodles of functionality and two the cost of ownership.  Compared to other stand alone CAM packages you are looking at a major saving in expense every year.

So lets take the plunge together from start to wherever we end.