New to CNC? Start here
Work through these seven days in order. Each one is about an hour of reading and one small thing to try on the machine. By the end you will have cut a real project and understood why it came out the way it did.
How to use this path
Do not try to do it all in one sitting. Each day is a short set of modules plus one thing to actually do on the machine, because CNC does not go into your head by reading. If you already know a day's material, skip it. If a module sends you sideways into something else, follow it: that is what the cross-links are for.
- Vectors, SVG, DXF, STL: which file does what
- CAD and CAM are two different jobs
- G-code and post processors in plain English
- Vectors, nodes and why a traced image cuts badly
You do not have to draw everything yourself, and at the start you should not. Cutting a clean, tested file teaches you more about toolpaths in an afternoon than fighting your own bad vectors does in a week. Drawing is a separate skill and it is easier to learn once you know how a good file behaves.
Kinetic Carving's library is SVG for flat and V-carve work, STL for 3D relief. Buy files one at a time, or take $30 a month for 14 download credits, where most designs cost 1 to 3 and unused credits roll over. Downloads stay yours after you cancel. The same designs are on Etsy, which is fine for a one-off; the membership is where the value sits, because fourteen files bought one at a time run $42 to $168.
- Bit anatomy: diameter, shank, flutes, stickout
- Upcut, downcut and compression
- V-bits
- Ball nose and tapered ball nose
- Choosing a bit for the job
- Do: lay out the bits you own and identify each one. If you cannot tell a downcut from an upcut by looking at it, that module has pictures in words.
Buy five good bits rather than a twenty piece set of soft carbide, where half of it goes dull before you have worked out what sharp looked like. Let the work tell you what to add.
High Country Tool is the maker Kinetic Carving buys from, and they cover the whole day three list: upcut and downcut spirals, compression, V-bits, tapered ball nose and the RIPPER surfacing cutters. They also publish a free feeds and speeds calculator, the kind of number day four tells you to start from instead of a figure off a forum. The 17.76% off selected bits is a Kinetic Carving membership perk, a code refreshed each billing cycle, so it comes with day two's membership rather than being something to hunt for.
- Feeds and speeds: the whole picture
- Chipload, the number that matters most
- Depth per pass
- Stepover
- Climb and conventional cutting
- Do: work out the chipload of whatever settings you have been using. It is the fastest way to find out whether your machine has been rubbing instead of cutting.
- Holding the work down, and every way it goes wrong
- Tabs and onion skinning
- Spoilboards
- Do: clamp a scrap piece the way you plan to hold your first project, then run the toolpath in the air above it and watch for the bit passing over a clamp.
- The first project, step by step
- Safety, read this before you press go
- Do: cut something small, simple and forgiving. A name sign in pine. Not the wedding gift.
- Pricing CNC work, so you are not working for nothing
- Where and how to sell: local, online and your own audience
- Selling on Etsy: search, tags, fees and when ads pay
- Selling digital files instead of finished pieces
- Custom orders: proofs, revisions and deposits
- What you can and cannot sell: copyright, trademarks, licences
- Taxes, bookkeeping and insurance
- Not part of the first week, and not required. Read it before you take money for anything, because pricing and the legal basics are much cheaper to learn before the first sale than after it.
After the first week
Once you have cut something, the next things worth learning, roughly in order of how much they improve your work:
- V-carving, because it makes signs look professional with very little machine time.
- Surfacing the spoilboard, because everything you cut afterwards is more accurate.
- Diagnosing tearout and burning, the two problems that will show up first.
- 3D carving, once flat work feels routine.
- Pricing work and selling it, if any of this is going to pay for itself.