Home  >>  CNC Projects >> How to Make Gears with a CNC Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3

 

How to Make Gears with a CNC Part 3

 Previous Page                                           

 

 

After the exported file has been opened in CamBam, do the following.

1. Click and drag over the entire gear to highlight it.

 

2.  Hit ctrl+p on your keyboard.

3.  Next, hit ctrl+j. This window should appear.

4.   Type in 0.01 and hit enter

 

It's now time to create the 2.5D profiles.

 

5.   Select the middle part of the gear

6.   Click "Insert a New 2.5D Profile" found at the top middle of the screen. (it looks like

two circles with one inside the other)

 

      A menu should appear at the left side of the screen. Yours will probably look a little different because I sized my window to fit the entire menu on screen.

     Also, if you lose the menu by accidently clicking in the wrong spot, you can get it back by clicking on machining then profile (1) at the upper left side of the screen.

     If the number of options looks daunting, don't worry it's not that difficult. Many of them you won't use while the others are somewhat self explanatory once you're familiar with them.

 

I'm not going to go into it, but, if you want, you can go to the CAMBAM website to learn what everything does.

http://www.cambam.co.uk/docs/cam/machining-operations-mops.html

 

      If your an impatient person, you should be able to just copy the settings from the picture below and get on with it. The numbers are pretty conservative, but you should still be careful.       

     These settings are for a 3/4" MDF board. If you're using a different board thickness, change the "Target Depth" making sure to type in a negative number. For example, a half inch board would be -0.5.

      It's also a good idea to add -0.05 to what ever number you have so that you can be sure the router bit will go all the way through. Our example for a half inch board would then be -0.55.

 

 

7.     Now that your finished adjusting the settings, right click Profile (1) on the upper left of the screen and click "Copy MOP to Template." Doing this will save these settings so that you won't have to start over when you create the next profile.

8.     Next, select the gear teeth and click "Insert a New 2.5D Profile" found around the top middle of the screen.  (it looks like two circles with one inside the other)

9.     Click anywhere around the gear, not on it though, to deselect the menu and hit ctrl+t to generate the tool paths. Next, hold alt+leftclick and move the mouse  to change the angle on the gear so that you can see the tool paths in 3D. As you can see, the tool paths are on the inside of the teeth which isn't really what you want. 

 

 

10.    Go to the menu on the left and click profile 2.  Find "InsideOutside" (it's highlighted in the screenshot for step 6), and change it to outside. Click anywhere around the gear, not on it though, to deselect the menu and hit ctrl+t again to regenerate the tool paths.  The toolpaths should now be on the outside.

 

 

11.    Alright, one last step and it's finished. Click CAM on the menu bar and select Create G-code File. Choose a name for the file, decide where you want to put it, and click save. Your done!

 

The only thing left to do is load the file into a machine controller (both EMC2 and Mach 3 for example) and cut out your gear.

 

Previous Page         

 

 

Home  >>  CNC Projects >> How to Make Gears with a CNC Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3