( fusion 360 & inkscape ) How to turn any Silhouette in to a CNC Cut File (Langmuir systems )

you have a linger systems CNC plasma cutter and you're pulling your hair out trying to figure out how to generate designs to be able to cut and put it to use and just file this money that you've just spent so today we're going to show you how to take a general silhouette turn it into a drawing and a tool path so we can get you started cutting [Music] so before you get settled in make sure did that subscribe and like button we'll see if we can't get you cutting sparks okay guys let's get started so obviously to start off with I am working off a PC Windows machine here so to whom it may concern' that is what we're working with here so the first thing you're gonna want to do is start off with downloading Inkscape and autodesk fusion 360 those are the two programs that we're gonna be using today so give you a second to pause and make sure you get those downloaded next thing we're gonna want to do is create four new folders on your desktop so go and create four new folders the first one is going to be named D X F there we go so the second one is going to be named SVG SVG the third one is going to be named parts to cut and the fourth one is going to be named pic and there we go so the next thing we're gonna want to do is we want to find a silhouette that we want to work with so maybe you have one already or maybe we can go to the internet and find one so bring up our browser and let's do a bottle opener so let's go silhouette bottle opener now when looking for silhouettes I want to caution you guys there are copyrighted things and stuff so do your due diligence with that you can scan through and we're gonna go down here to this little guy best free opener silhouette and he says best free silhouette opener images for download so I'm going to assume that since it's a free download that they don't mind us using it so do your due diligence on copyrights but we're going to take and click and drag this image to our desktop we can close out our browser and we're gonna drop that in our pictures folder so we know where it's apps' next thing we're gonna do is we are going to open up Inkscape so we'll give this a second to open up there we go now once you've entered Inkscape first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that your cursor is what is the tool that you are using and that is determined by this little guy up in the corner here and then we want to go to file and click file I'm going to scroll down to the import button click on import button and then the default usually is your desktop so now we've got these four new files that we've made right here easy to find so we're gonna go to our pictures file and there is our silhouette so we're gonna click on that and open it up and we are gonna push OK to import it so next we're going to take our silhouette and we're gonna drag it to the center of the paper here and we want to click on it and you can see those arrows change direction that just kind of defines that you're in the right spot there now I'm not super familiar with Inkscape I'm just bringing you through the function of creating a bitmap off of this so that we can turn it into an SVG and therefore import it into fusion 360 so after we've completed that and exit we want to go to is our path drop-down so let's click on our path and we are going to toggle down to trace bitmap and we're gonna click on that so we can drag this off to the side so we can see it and all we should need to do is click the ok button there once we've clicked the ok button we can scroll back over to our upper left hand side over here and we are gonna click file and drop down to save as now when it pops up the important thing to look at is right down here in this save as type bar we want to make sure that it is an SVG and it should default to an SVG but just make sure that then we're gonna name our file name our file excuse my lack of vocabulary so this file let's just call it opener Oh and then we are going to save that file so now we should be able to close out of Inkscape and we should be able to go to our SVG file we just look at it look we have our SVG file here as opener we can confirm that and then we will open up fusion 360 so we'll give that a second to open up here okay now that fusion 360 has opened up the first thing that we are going to want to do is go over to our upper right side and we have our cube here that's gonna show the orientation of our drawing and we want to click on the front so when we're using a linear system setup you always want your z-axis to be facing towards you so as long as your cube is facing towards the front here in this orientation we should be in the right spot the next thing we're gonna want to do is we're gonna want to go up to our create sketch and double click that and then go to our plane and double click it our plane and now you can see our sketch palette popped up over here and we know that we are opened up and ready to sketch I can we don't want to finish our sketch but I can close this out so it's out of the way kind of fold it up next thing we're gonna want to do is we're gonna come up here to our upper right hand corner and take the insert drop-down and slide down to our insert SVG and click on that guy now we're gonna go select our SVG file and here are our four folders that we made so let's go to our SVG folder and select our opener now we can see our openers popped up right here and then we can select ok over here on our insert SVG ok and now we have our bottle openers so now if you want to move these guys around you can go down here and hit this little hand on the pan and you can grab a hold and drag this over here and you can zoom in by the roller on your mouse so the first thing that we're gonna want to do to be able to use these guys is we want to go up here to our constraints and now I'm not a professional with fusion 360 all I know that is when you first import your SVG these come in as a green highlight and for them to be workable and to be edible they need to be blue and how we do that is we go up to our red lock button up here which is our fix unfixed function and click on that now you can see our cursor has the little red lock right beside it and next we're gonna go to upper left corner and we were gonna highlight our parts here its highlight um and then for some reason I had to highlight twice but now we can see they turn from a green to a blue now this is gonna be critical to be able to do your editing now we only want one bottle opener so so now that we're done with our fix on fix function we will right click and hit cancel so now you can see our little red lock is not beside our cursor again and we only want to make one bottle opener today so I am going to highlight this second bottle opener and then I am going to right click on it and click delete and there it is once it's blue all this stuff is editable so I'm going to show you a couple key functions to use in this program to be able to edit your bottle opener before you write your tool path here so the first thing we're gonna want to do is see what size it is so you never know exactly what size it is when it imported so we're gonna go up to our inspect button in our upper right corner and click the ruler and then we can come over and select the furthest points apart we're going to the top and we're gonna select the bottom and we can see that currently it is point one zero I'm sorry one point zero zero four inches so it's about one inch we want to make that a little bigger so what we're gonna do is we're going to close our majoring function over here close both of them up and we are going to hit our quick key for our search so reach down and hit your s key and that's going to bring up this little window which is your search engine and then you're gonna hit s again just look to find your scale so we want to scale this up so let's select scale now we're gonna come over here to our scale palette and the first thing it wants us to do is select our entities so we want to highlight all the entities or I like the part that we would like to scale so let's highlight the whole thing and then next thing we want to do is select a point so let's hit select here and then come over and it honestly doesn't matter where you click on on it it just wants you to show it a point so let's select a point on this guy there we go don't ask me why I took a couple times to click on it so now this is scaled by proportion of multiples so we know that it was one inch long before so I want this to be roughly 4 inches long so I'm gonna hit 4 and it's basically timesing it by 4 so now you can see that it made it a little bit larger there so we're gonna click OK and then we're gonna go up to our inspect again and we're gonna measure it again so we're gonna click the top we're gonna click the bottom and inspect it and see we multiply the 1 inch by 4 so we're just under 4 inches there now we are at I get probably as 4 inches if it major actually measured from the tip there we go so we are at 4 inches from this point to this point excuse me so the next thing that maybe we want to do is maybe we want to add a custom text to it so let's modify this a little bit so let's say we want to make add a text to our bottle opener before we cut it out so let's hit our search key again so our search key is the s key so hit your s key on your keyboard and this brings up your search again and then we are going to hit T for texts and we can scroll down and see that there's a text function here so we can hit our texts select the general vicinity that you would like your text to hit so I'm going to select right here now we can come up to our text drop-down and let's say your name is Sam so I'm going to put a bold capital S in there the next function on our text drop-down is the size of text you want to use so we are going to make that let's see roughly like let's say 1.5 inches tall and then you can make it bold bold is always good when you're plasma cutting because it just stands out a little better so you can also select a font here we'll just go with what we have here next we'll grab the S and we'll drag it down to the center of our part and select okay we are ok with the size and location the next thing we're going to need to do is make that s into a actual drawing line so we want to right click on our s and we're gonna drop down to explode text and there we go our text is now a drawing line but as we can see it is highlighted green so if you recall what we had to do with the original bottle opener we're going to need to code up to our fix unfixed function double click and we're gonna drop down and we are going to highlight our s and there we go now we are blue now we are going to right click and hit cancel so that we're no longer have that little lock by our cursor and we have a complete bottle opener now there are a couple other things you can do let's say you want to create a line and add something to it you can hit your quick key for line which is L or you can go up here to your line button on the upper left-hand corner and we're gonna you could click a line and make a line wherever you want say you go there and it'll click another line there and you can add on and build whatever you want to your bottle opener or your part that you are doing and then maybe you don't like what you did so you're going to hit your quick key to erase it and the erase function on this program is called trim so you can hit t4 trim on your keypad and it will make this little X function X pop by your cursor then you can click on it and trim it right back off so hopefully that was helpful there so before we go and rate our tool path one last thing I like to do that just helps out on the backend is we are gonna assume that our kerf width is 55 thousands so double 55 thousands is roughly 110 thousandths quickly translated we don't want any spaces that are less than 125,000 so we're gonna go up to inspect and we're gonna check out the width of our little s here and we want to make sure lips good inspect there we go we want to make sure that we are more than 110 thousandths which we are good there that is the smallest space that you're gonna want when your plasma cutting otherwise it will just cause you headaches trust me so next let's get to writing our tool path the first thing we're going to want to do is the first thing we're gonna want to do is extrude our part now I see a lot of people that just go on to the tool writing function without extruding their part and it will cause you a lot more headaches trust me so how to extrude our part we are going to right click on our part and click press pull next we are going to select our press pull so we want to come over here to this guy highlights click it and then we're going to come down to this little box right here and let's say we are cutting this out of 8 inch so eight inches point one two five we'll enter our parameters click enter and there we go we have our bottle opener so now we can grab our little square up on the side and orbit around see how cool it is we've extruded its eighth inch now make sure you hit the front button again before you start so let's actually write a tool path now let's go up to our upper left corner to the design button where click on that and drop down to the manufacturer function once we get to the manufacture function we are gonna go over to our units of measure and hit change active units now this little banner is gonna pop up on the very right side over here and we are gonna select inches and okay now you have to do that every time I'm not sure why you can't make it default to it but that's the way it is the next thing we're gonna want to do is go up to our upper left corner again and hit the setup folder don't hit the drop down hit the folder itself now this is gonna create our tool path set up with the language systems the easiest way that I have found to do your tool setup is you want to collect your zero you want to make your setup zero in the bottom left hand corner so we're gonna click this dot in the bottom I have left hand corner so that we can see that our XY axis is going to start in the bottom left hand corner what this is gonna do is make it easier for you to line up on your material when you start your cut you can put your torch in the furthest bottom left hand corner and know that you will have enough room to cut next thing we're going to want to do is we're gonna come over to the setup function on the right hand banner here we're gonna click the drop down and click cutting we're not milling today we're gonna do some cutting next thing we're gonna do is go down to the model button and click body now when you click body you just need to make sure that your part has highlighted in blue and that is all you need to do on this part we can click the ok now and move on now I am leaving out lots of functions here I'm just doing this in the simplest fashion so that you can go from 0 to be able to get a cut part as you learn there will be much more functions that you can do to fine tune things this is just the simplest version so the next thing that we want to move on to is cutting so we want to come up to our upper left hand corner and we want to click our cutting function here now our banner is going to pop up on the furthest right hand side here and we're to come over and select our tool now this is assuming that you have washed the linear systems video on how to set up your tool if you have not please drop down the comments and I can make a video of that but we're gonna assume that you've set up your tool and as you know if you watch that video your tool is gonna be located in the local file so we're gonna click our local file and select our tool and select ok now once you setup your tool you only have to do that once but you do have to select it every single time next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna drop down and we're gonna select our feed rates now all three of these feed rates will need to be the same there are different feeds and speeds for eighth inch training the razor weld 45 I've found the best feet for the raceworld 45 is for 8 inch thick material for the razor weld 45 I've found the best feed rate for eighth inch thick material is 65 inches minute now if you have different machines this is going to be different for you but this gives you a good starting point so we're gonna go 65 I like this 65 and I apologize I'm computer literate here 65 now do not push the OK button yeah the next thing I'm gonna go up to this we're gonna go up to the geometry button and we want to click on that this is where extrude in your part helps out a lot you do not have to select the individual tool pass it will do them all for you what you want to do is you want to select this little box select same plane faces now you want to come over and the important part is the way you click your part so you do not want to click it like this we're just the perimeter is highlighted you want to come over it to where the entire part is Mac and click it and there we go we have our tool paths now you want to come in and make sure that everything is correct meaning that your cuts on the inside your arrows on the inside and your cuts on the outside you can't over here a little bit your arrows are on the outside so we know that is correct and ready to go next thing we want to do is come over to our passes tab and we're going to click on that the only thing that you're going to need to do here like I said there are other settings once you get more advanced with it but just to get you started is we want to click on our composition types and we click on that and select control in the computer next tab we're going to come up here and we were going to click on the linking tab now just some general ones quick to get you started is I'm gonna recommend you do a zero leading radius I'm gonna recommend that you do ninety degrees of lead in and I am going to recommend that your lips I got 90 to either 90 degrees elite in and then we have our lead in distance now the main thing you want to consider for your lead in distance is your kerf width next thing we have here is our lead in distance now there are two main things that we want to consider with our lead in distance one is our kerf width and the smallest width of cut on our part and our leading distance wants to be somewhere in between half the smallest width of our part and our kerf width so we know our kerf width is fifty five thousandths and let's just say that half the smallest area of our part is let's call it one hundred and forty thousands so half 140 thousand is seventy thousands so we can and that is still larger than our kerf width so we can go point zero seven for our lead in distance now you can collect and select an entry point if you would like you do not have to for it to continue your cut paths so next we're gonna select the OK button and over here it's going to write her to a path up now look at that we have a tool path that is written so the next thing you can do is you can go up here to your simulate button which is kind of fun we're gonna click our simulate button and you can click play and you can watch that guy simulate the cut you can even grab the cube and pull it over and you can see it cut now it's not going to cut that fast this is just a simulation the other thing you can do is you can go over to your statistics over here in your simulate drop-down and it will show you your machine time so it is going to actually take 37 seconds to make this cut and you have two point four feet of cut which is crazy and a little four-inch part that you have that much cut distance but it's crazy how much those add up so now that we have our cut path there the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go up to this button the post-process button and we're gonna click the g1 g2 button and it's going to bring up this little tab here now this is assuming that you have watched the linear systems mach3 install video and you have properly uploaded your full version of Mach threes so the only thing that you're gonna have to deal with after you've completed that linear systems video is your Pierce delay so we're gonna come down here and we're gonna select our Pierce delay on eighth of an inch material depending on your machine and stuff you're going to want that somewhere in between 0.5 and 1 seconds with my machine with eighth inch material 0.7 seconds seems to be the magic number and then we can hit host now we pop up to our desktop again and name our folder so we are going to name it I like to add the size of the item that I'm doing so I'm gonna do a four inch opener and then I'm going to select the parse to be cut folder and we're gonna save it so there you go we've created tool path from a silhouette now we can exit out when we go to open our Mach 3 loader if you've already got all that stuff done we'll wait for this to load up we can select our reset button and select load G code now our file is going to pop up here and we're gonna select our desktop because we know that those files are on the desktop and our parts to be cut so thanks for watching guys hopefully that video wasn't too long and hopefully it was valuable to you if it was please subscribe we're going to do some more videos on other ways that you can do designs and whether that be pictures or parts we're gonna have some more videos coming up so make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you don't miss out on those make sure you hit that like button that'll help to agri algorithm out so that we can make more videos as well also if there's a specific problem that you're having related to the og lame your systems table drop a comment down below and I will do my best to make a video to solve that problem for you so thanks for watching again guys and go build something [Music] [Music]

Channel: AM Custom fab

Views: 13,866

Keywords: cad, cross fire cnc, fusion 360, tool path, cnc plasma, lamgmuir systems, how to make a cut file

Id: i1BgJruHeQ4

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020