Capstone Week 4 - Open Source Hardware Workflow

This week had a bunch of good reading about interview questions, getting your foot in the door at a new job, etc. I enjoyed that reading but didn't really get much out of it. I am starting a new job soon, if I lost that job I have a few good backup options with great people. Being in between jobs this week does mean one thing: no access to SolidWorks. So what should I do? Well I have been thinking this day would come, and don't really like expensive software or "cloud CAD" like fusion 360. These options are good for high end design and manufacturing. A lot of what I have made over the years is pretty simple though. That is where FreeCAD comes in.

FreeCAD is the mechanical counter part to KiCAD (which is for circuit board design). They are made by different people, but combine you can design electrical and mechanical components. I have messed around with FreeCAD a little bit but this was my first week really using it to try to design something. It went OK so far, but I will really commit to using FreeCAD for all of my open source projects moving forward. The overall open source software work flow for my projects will include all three of the following:

KiCAD - Circuit Boards

FreeCAD - Mechanical Design

Cura - 3d printing, I will use the lulzbot edition, which combines an open source 3d printer with open source software. 

EMC2 - CNC machine control, milling metal and plastics

Each of these programs is free and has their source code available online. The more people that use this kind of workflow the more money we can all save and the more we can collaborate. If you are going to sink a ton of time into a project, why not give it a long life by having it be open source? That seems to be the way to go to me.