I’m starting this thread to share calculators, PSA documents, etc. Feel free to contribute! 
First up is a machining calculator. It’s not fancy but it works well for comparing different methods side-by-side, such as HEM vs. traditional roughing. Second is an Excel calculator I made. It’s mostly for hydraulics, but it also has a bunch of other little widgets. I’ll be posting some more as I get time…
(edit: realized attachments were switched around)
Machining Calc.xlsx (869 KB)
A handy Conversion tool widget. It’s much nicer than Winduhs calculator (ugh).
Here’s a zip file with references on HEM, insert wear, and threadmilling for the machinists out there.
And the other one is a regular gold mine that a friend put together while he taught at MCC.
mcc cheat sheet.xls (395 KB)
Machining Misc..zip (6.81 MB)
I guess this is tangent and let me know if this belongs in a separate thread.
Some of the open source software I use is listed below:
I’m a big fan of LIghtshot for Screen-shots. Can use Keyboard-shortcuts, plus it will let you do some basic annotation etc before it saves.
https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html
Notepad++ as previously noted, is great. One of my favorite features is you can have mutliple tabs open, and you don’t need to save them; or more accurately, if you don’t save, It will remember what you were working on from previous session.
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
Does anyone know of any open-source tools for laying out parts (nesting) for cnc waterjet cutting etc? I know my clients have nesting algorithms as part of their CAM packages, but it is sometimes good to send pre-nested sheets.
Wow, never thought i would see LaTeX folks here 
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My LaTeX got a bit rusty after I left uni, but it is indeed a great tool.
Some other open-source software that is on my favorite list:
1. Greenshot
https://getgreenshot.org/
→ Great for screenshot and basic edit
2. Autohotkey
https://www.autohotkey.com/
→ For shortcut and easy to learn
3. Notion
https://www.notion.so/
→ Not really an open-source, but a pretty good knowledge management tool
I also use Greenshot and absolutely love it.
I like to use Virtual Box on my work station so I can have a Linux machine for the occasional need to use some tools that are not available in Windows. Also I do API work in a Win10 VPN edit: not VPN, I meant VM.
as I’m testing my add ins that register dlls and so if I bugger something up I can just go back to an earlier snapshot instead of the risk of reinstalling a bunch of stuff on my host machine.
Marshall Wilson I came across this tool while sending some stuff out to a local laser shop for a personal project: https://deepnest.io/
It uses a genetic algorithm (GA) approach to nest 2D shapes into a sheet. It wasn’t capturing some “obvious” layouts for me at one point but I went in to the settings and cranked up the # of mutations and it got much better.
Very Cool! Thanks MarkMorreale ! I’ll check it out.
-m
So, this is autonesting software. Very nice to see this functionality at this price (functionality/price = 80/0 = infinity. Cool!)
I worked at a place that did a HUGE amount of sheet metal. I did two things that immediately saved us a ton of money. First, was to research our material thicknesses and tooling and use that information to develop accurate K-factors. With this we were able to make very accurate sheet metal and incorporate more features such as pre-punched holes on bent flanges. HUGE benefit, but hard to measure monetarily. The other thing we did was buy some autonesting software. This wa in 2007. The software cost $20k with another $5k for training. In hard dollars alone we saved over $225k in the first year, but we also eliminated our bottleneck, reduced WIP and all but eliminated our inventory of parts.
I no longer work there, but the value of this type of software is incredible! Thanks for sharing your link!
Lantek nesting software (which is what we use) costs ~$3K per seat for lifetime. That is the best I’ve ever used, way better than ProNest which is $15K 
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But for a free program, that’s not bad. At all.
I once left deepnest running all night - not only did it find some really great nesting arrangements, I didn’t have to turn on the heat in the office the next morning because my poor PC was running full tilt and putting out a lot of heat. Talk about efficiency!
I got couple of contributions aswell:
And my personal favorite:
edit: added one more item, nomacs
I’ve been enjoying LICEcap https://www.cockos.com/licecap/
This is what I use to capture my animated gifs. The forum uses thumbnails for big images, so you have to click on the image to play the gif. Software is very easy to use, and I haven’t found any trojan crap with it yet.
I guess I forgot this one:
VLC, plays any video file https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
I use NOVO by Kennametal fairly often for HP, Torque calcs https://www.kennametal.com/us/en/resources/novo.html
The one thing this doesn’t have is a thrust calc, which is odd, but their online Engineering calcs does have this, again odd, since those are probably a decade or more older. https://www.kennametal.com/us/en/resources/engineering-calculators.html
Not a calculator per say but if you do anything with Extruded structures, like enclosures, simple tables etc I highly recommend May-Cad. http://may-cad.org/ it’s an entire CAD system specifically for Maytechs extruded products. Not only can you create what you want, export it in STEP, SW and a few other formats, but it also can give you a complete BOM WITH pricing. The prices are kept up to date and typically match within 10% or so of what my distributor gives me.
If you do alot with servos Mitsubishi has a nice calculator for their products and then you can usually cross reference to others https://www.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/products/drv/servo/smerit/capa_slct/index.html#pageUnit01 This is especially nice if you’re messing around with motor sizes, gear boxes, belt ratios etc. I didn’t see a link to the software there though…and Mit’s site is a bit of a mess…not as bad as Allen-Bradleys but still hard to find things.
Ditto. It’s a Clipboard Manager; can’t live without it!
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NBLGGH3ZBJQ?rtc=1&hl=en-ca&gl=CA