#Cambam cnc pocket pro
#Cambam cnc pocket free

The final part of the CAM process is managing the holding tabs. I show each part and the primitive geometry given machining operations, profiles for polygons, pocket for pockets, and drills for medium to small circles (I generally use an inside profile for large holes so I can use holding tabs to hold the scrap so that these don't pop-up and jam the machine during the fabrication process). It's good to check the geometry to determine all of the geometry was transferred and transferred correctly. In the example shown, all of the arranged parts are shown in an orientation that does not work very well, but a quick rotation of these arranged parts puts them in a good orientation to start the machining operations. Since CAMBAM places these circles having normals of -1 mirrored about the y-axis of the origin, the circles can be mirrored about the origin using the mirror command from the CAD Extras plug-in. This is derived from the circles having a normal of -1 which is opposite to the normal that these circles need. The first obvious visual problem is the dots/circles on the left of the origin. The file that was exported from SketchUp is opened in CAMBAM.

#Cambam cnc pocket free

If not, you will need to pick up the free dxf or stl export utility for SketchUp, but be warned, the circles will be transferred as polygons made up of many lines and all of the circles will need to be re-drawing in CAM.

#Cambam cnc pocket pro

This is easy if you have the pro version of SketchUp. The pocket and counter-bore geometry should be kept so that we can use that in the CAM process to determine the depth that we need to create those machining operations.ДЇinally, the geometry that remains is saved as a. However, there is a peculiarity, that I will mention during the CAM process.

The actual geometry that we keep remains as circles, arcs, lines and polygons as we would expect. When faces are transferred to the CAM program, they contain the same geometry, but certain geometry, like circles, are just polygons made up of small lines. You might be wondering, why the faces are removed but the line and polygon geometry (on the top face) is kept.

The faces are also removed to eliminated for the same reason. These are not needed as it will just double up on the geometry that we need. After the parts are exploded, any z geometry and back lines and polygons are removed. Second, all of the parts are exploded so we can remove the faces and geometry not needed in the CAM process. This will help in the CAM side of things. While the parts are arranged, the parts are oriented so that the counter bores and pockets are facing up. Additionally, the spacing of the parts by just a little more than the diameter of the bit can reduce the wear of the bit since during half of the passes, the end mill is only cutting very little material, since the material was already cut from the part next to it.

The parts are spaced away from each other so that the end mill (bit/cutter) can fit between the pieces and that there can be a roughing pass and finishing pass. The parts are arranged in a way that the sheets are utilized as much as possible and the remainder is reduced for reuse. The point of this video is taking the 3 dimensional assembly and preparing it for use in a CAM program.ДЇirst, the parts are all laid out on sheets just like they will be cut out on the CNC machine. Since this is not a tutorial on using SketchUp, the drawing and designing portion of the video is sped up, but many of the design considerations can be seen. In this video, the assembly is being designed and drawing in SketchUp.