Hi from another nooby

[bathtubcurve]

Hi cnc'ers. Just thought it polite to introduce myself as a nooby.
I own a cnc workshop but by trade am not an engineer. I can programme mainly FANUC and Hiedenhein.
I'm currrently in the process of bailing out due to a very unpleasant partner.
I enjoy using cnc and would like to carry on as a home hobby in my garage.
There appears to be a mass of info and helpful people at cnc zone so I thought I'd join and give myself time to decide wether to buy a fully functional lathe and machine center (240 volt) or to retrofit a manual type. Got an old little john at the back of my garage that my dad pushed onto me years ago but I didn,t get round to using. Seen some nice looking stuff at reasonble prices from the US but up till now not a lot in the UK. Any opinions or advice greatfully recieved.
PS. One thing I am realy keen to learn is CAD/CAM. Where's the best place to learn from scratch?

[budP]

HI
welcome to the zone.

Well here are some free stuff for you.
Progesmart is a good free 2d drafting software and there is a thread here
for the program.

Here is a really good lesson set for you to learn with.
http://www.we-r-here.com/cad/tutorials/level_1/1-2.htm.
He will sell a CD really cheap but the lessons on the net are really well done

For CAM EMC2 is also free but it is a Linux program.

Have a happy new year and sorry for you to be fighting with your partner in
your business.

budP

[bathtubcurve]

Thanks for replying budp
The Autocad link you sent was invaluable.
A friend who owns company that I help out now and again has an old Autocad 14 and has loaned it to me indeffinately.
So I'm giving it a go this evening and see how things progress.
Couldn't find anything about Progesmart but thanks anyway. At least I've made a start.
I'll also give EMC2 a go in time. Lucky for me my son is at Uni' doing computer science and runs linux on his computer. One thing at a time.
It's funny how a little bit of help from someone like you seems to give you the spark to look around and then I wonder why I didn't find this myself.
Thanks again for your help.
Next thing is to decide what CNC mill and lathe to get for my garage. So more looking around.
Have a good 2009.