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Tuesday, January 30, 2024

FreeCAD

 I beat my head against the wall long enough to make a very simple 3D object and export it as an STL.  Now I am trying topm find an STL to gCode converter intend for milling not 3D printing.


5 comments:

  1. I have done this successfully a number of times. If you could tell me where you're getting stuck maybe I could help you figure it out.

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    1. Can you email me? Is there a sequence for exporting gCode from FreeCAD?

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  2. Do I still have to do the whole SpamIamnot thing?

    Going from an STL to Milling G-code.... Might be better to not do the intermediate STL file format and keep your design in FreeCad. Then you're looking at the Path workbench. You can start here on the manual: https://wiki.freecad.org/Path_Workbench

    I haven't done this before because I've been exporting STLs for 3D printing, and that's what your first sentence made me think of. There is a process to take an STL and convert it into a FreeCad object, but it's not easy.

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    1. Probably not. I will check my spam folder. I will look at that manual. At the moment I am busy writing expert declarations. I am deep in 17th century court records.

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  3. I won't be in the spam folder because I asked first... I only saw the post last night. (I don't check G-mail often).

    I remember looking into CNC mill stuff back when I was thinking about building a router table. But I wasn't sure what to use to go from CAD to CAM (actual control would have been via Mach3, but I wasn't sure what I'd use to do the equivalent of Slicing for a printer). So finding the feature exists in FreeCAD is nice. And the fact that it apparently has some 3D cut functionality, rather than just 2.5D is a point in its favor. I'm going to have to read up on it some too.

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