Thanks to Al Watson (@atwatsoniii) who has shown us that Fusion’s CAM can produce Rotary GCODE and our Rotary can cut it successfully. However, it is my understanding that the Fusion’s CAM capability is a paid option, whereas, FreeCAD’s CAM is a free builtin capability. So I thought I’d try using FreeCAD’s CAM for generating GCODE for our CNC Rotary.
First I built a simple cylinder and sphere model as a solid of revolution as a test case.
Naturally I could have directly used the solid of revolution, but I converted it into an STL mesh, because I am interested in processing other STL files (tiki, table leg, etc.) in a similar fashion.
After a few hiccups (isn’t that just typical) I was able to generate and cut a rough-cut 1/4" ball end path. There is definitely a learning curve in using the rotary!
And a finish-cut 1/16" ball end path.
Sweet!
Attached is a first-pass step-by-step procedure I used to run the CNC rotary. There is more to come on how to use FreeCAD’s CAM to create the rotary GCODE rough and finish files.
See “VCarve for CNC Rotary” article
