Your first project
This tutorial takes you through one complete job in OpenChuckCAM, from an empty window to G-code and a setup sheet. Every step has a screenshot of the real application. The job is a small turned and fluted piece (a baluster with a ball finial), rough-cut with one tool and finished with another, for a Makera Z1 with a chuck.
Warning
The piece, the tools and every speed and feed in this tutorial are an example for learning the program, not a tested cutting recipe. Nothing here has been cut on a machine. Choose your own tools, speeds and feeds for your material and machine.
Generated G-code must be verified by you before it is run on a machine. OpenChuckCAM does not guarantee that a program is safe or correct for any machine, tool or setup. The last page of this tutorial, Before you run anything, says what to check.
OpenChuckCAM is in early development. See the known limitations.
Note
The screenshots are from an earlier build of the program. They show five steps along the top of the window, ending in Post and export. The program now has four steps: Model, Setup, Operations and Simulate. Post and export is a button on the Simulate step (and File > Post and export…), so where a page says Continue to post and export, use that button instead. Some other labels may differ a little. The screenshots will be taken again from the current program.
What you need
- The program. See Install and first run.
- One file from the OpenChuckCAM repository:
testdata/examples/baluster/baluster.stl(269 KB). Save it somewhere you will find it again. A finished copy of the project is intestdata/examples/baluster/baluster-projectin the same folder, if you want to compare or skip ahead.
The screenshots were taken with a software renderer at 1366 x 768, so colours and line widths on your screen may differ a little. File paths in them are from the machine that took them; yours will be your own.
Words used in this tutorial
- Rotary axis, A axis
- On a 4-axis machine the work is held at one end in a chuck and turned about a line along its length. That line is the rotary axis; on the Makera Z1 it lies along X, and the turning is called A. The cutter moves along X and across the work (Y and Z) while A turns the part, so the cutter can reach all the way round.
- Stock
- The blank you start with: here a round bar. The program cuts the part out of the stock.
- Held region
- The length of the stock that the chuck grips. It is never cut, and the toolpaths keep clear of it. (You can also hold the far end, for example with a tailstock; the program only knows that end as a held length, not as a body.) See held region.
- Tool library
- The list of cutters. Each tool has a diameter, a shape and cutting data for a material. See tool library.
- Stepover
- How far the cutter moves sideways between neighbouring passes. See stepover.
- Stepdown
- How deep each layer of roughing goes. See stepdown.
- Stock to leave
- Material deliberately left on the part by an operation so that a later operation can finish it. See stock to leave.
- Tolerance
- How closely the toolpath may differ from the model. See tolerance.
- Post (post-processor)
- The part of the program that turns the toolpaths into the G-code dialect a given machine controller reads. The Makera Z1 has its own post. See post-processor.
- Work offset (G54)
- The register in the controller that stores where the part’s zero is. Here it is on the rotary axis at the model’s X = 0. See work offset.