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Week 7: CNC and CAM

Intro

This week is BIG MACHINE WEEK!

I made this beauty.

but before we get to the fun stuff, let’s go over some safety.

The Lecture for this week was so wonderful. I highly reccommend checking it out! THe experience and passion in the speakers voices is clear to see.

Safety

This is the CNC machine. His name is “model number” It is a large and dangerous beauty.

  • Closed toed shoes
  • DO NOT operate alone
  • Keep the stop button with you at all times
  • Make sure your materials are secured
  • Mask, ear protction and eye protection. No your glasses are not enough
  • KNOW where the fire extingisher i
  • Keep your phone on you
  • stay alert and aware of your surroundings.
  • DO NOT OPERATE when tired.

I would like to note that when I am feeling too tired to operate and watch the CNC safely, I have someone who is sit with me.

CNC Vocabulary

Runout: When the bit in the machines is spun rapidly to cut something, it is not perfectly ventered. There are minor deviations. This is called runout alignment: THe process where we calibrate the machines, the bits and makes sure it “knows” where the cut material is.

fixturing: we use double sided tape

speeds: how fast the bit is rotating

feeds: how fast the material is cutting into the material

materials: we are using plwood

toolpaths: we used pocket and cut through. there are other options like inlay.

Passes: The amount of times the machine repeats a path, each time cutting away more matrial downcut vs upcut

deflection: the aomunt the bit deflects in response to it being pushed against the wood. bigge passes, bigger force, bigger deflection

same with feed rate

FREECAD

-draft sketches

I designed this

Vcarve

this is how you lay out and create the gcode for this machine -toolpaths -jointbaby

mark4 & cnc

This is the interface we use to run the machine

prep

-calibration -tun machines on -controllers and buttonss -aircut -secure material

cut

-cut!!! -watch

removal

-wedge for safety -move machine away

post-processing

Cats

Files

Copyright 2026 - Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial

Source code hosted at gitlab.fabcloud.org