Complete Cam Rookie needs help.

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
#1

This is what I know…

-I have a 3/4 inch thick piece of cabinet ply clamped down onto my workbench.

-My MPCNC looks very nice. However, unless I learn how to actually cut things with it. It will just be a pretty ornament in my garage. Lol

-I want my end mill to start against my workbench at the zero point, at the start of the run I want it to raise up and move over to the starting point and start cutting.

I’ve gone over vicious’s walk through a dozen times attempting the tool paths on my own and end up with something that’s going to take 40+ hours to cut. I know this is wrong, clearly.

In the walk through, he mentions that the program will ask you how tall your workpiece is. Not once did it ever ask. It only asked me how deep I wanted my yellow cuts to be because I must not have specified a value.

Does the .dxf file provided have dimensions associated with it? As in does Estlcam already know how big the piece is?

I know this is a lot to chew but if at the bare minimum all that I obtained from this post was how to take his file that already has the tool paths present and learned how to adjust it from his workpiece (11.5mm) to my 3/4 ply. Then I’d be happy. More schooling would be fantastic though.

Thank you to anyone willing to help.

#2

Fusion 360 might ask, but Estlcam doesn’t ask how thick your part is. You have to figure that part out on your own.
If you have say 3/4" plywood, then that would be 19.05mm.
If you want to cut a pocket that is half an inch deep, you’d select the hole toolpath function, click your shape, then the toolpath depth would be 12.7mm deep.
You then click on the pocketing strategy drop down, still on your hole properties window and select peel, then click the pocket button.
This will fill in your shape red. Continue doing this until all your shapes are done.
Now to cut your part out, you select the Part function, click on the outside line of your part.
In the Properties window, click toolpath depth, and enter say, 19.5mm. This will cut .45mm deeper than your plywood. Depending on how parallel your spoilboard is to the router, this should be good enough. If not adjust accordingly.
Then click on Holding tab length and give it a useful value, I usually use 3 or 4mm, and I usually change the height to half the thickness of what I’m cutting.

#3

I loaded up the provided .dxf and attempted to once again create the tool paths. I used the dimensions of 19.7 for the outside of my cut as well as the hole and 12 for the two inner pockets. This time it asked me my material thickness with a preloaded 0.395" (I believe). I changed that to 19.7. When I loaded the gcode into repetier it extended way under the bed on the print preview. I have to be a complete moron.

#4

I even took a board I had laying around and put it through the thickness sander to get it to 11.5mm and just tried to use vicious’s tool paths file. Starting with my end mill against the bed. It just took off into the board about halfway, made a hole about the size of a Nicole (wonky at that) raised up way above the board and started to cut the air.

#5

Get the end mill where you want it, then in repetier under the manual control tab enter g92 x0 y0 z0 in the g-code box and hit send. This will zero out everything. Now try to run your code.

The preview will be under the surface in repetier. Make sure your length of unit is set for mm in estlcam.

#6

Why does it need to start at the workbench level instead of the top of the piece to be cut? I have always set the x and y where I want it to start and the z on the top of the piece to be cut. The I zero it out by picking set home offsets on the display when using an SD card or disconnecting and reconnecting in repetier host when using that to send the file.