Fusion 360 CAM — Engraving Letters Text & Art — #LarsLive 86

welcome to livestream number 86 today is Friday we made it folks from head here that's 27th October 2017 wow I almost forgot what month we were in it's Friday man it's a long long good week but a a long week today is all about cam so if you're not interested in well not quite all about cam but primarily about cam so I'm not engraving so if this have no answers for you kick back take the rest of the day off I think they'll be fine you probably worked hard enough today we're gonna talk about engraving and what's her about a couple of different things when it comes to engraving because I've gotten a few few quite a few of emails where I can't even can't even speak on Fridays I got a few emails about engraving and you know the interesting thing about engraving is that there's kind of like a couple different flavors of it there is the cam portion where you machine it out and I think it's important to remember that the K means out of fusion 360 primarily are written from CNC milling and turning so like job shop type of engraving and when we're talking about job shop type of engraving we many times talking about like marking parts with an engraving fun um but then of course there's also the more you know our perspective of it where people want to do you know more complicated engraving than just like stick font letters if usually can handle some of that I will say though uh that fusion is not meant to like do really in-depth crazy engraving like crazy art kind of things well you know what let's jump into view let's jump into the software and talk a bit about it and then and then you can see what we can do and we'll go from there so you already got 35 people in here thank you so much for joining all right thank you for coming let's jump into this so the first thing I want to talk a little bit about before we get into to fusion don't worry fusion is open is is it's the different kinds of funds that we we kinda like will work with the inside of fusion I'm the first one well now where we are inside of fusion the first one is the standard text font that actually comes with booth fusion so if you click on this you can insert text in here so if I just place my cursor somewhere it doesn't really matter where you get a text box over here and you can type something in like this and you can change the height of it if you want to now what you're looking at right now is the standard windows font okay so that is really what fusion are using now this is extremely important that you know this because that's where you could potentially add different you know fonts in here if you want to use them now one thing to be aware of is that windows fonts are just kind of an image that is being projected and if i zoom in on it I hope I don't make you sick you will see that it becomes very blurry and that is what we kind of call raster in in kind of like software terminology so it's an image right so I have another image let's show you what I'm talking about if we're opening up this image here so this is thing TGIF thank God it's Friday so I got to do that so if we zoom in on this anybody who's not in the United States maybe don't know this but that's also a restaurant chain called that okay if i zoom in on it see what happens you already seen this before like where things can picture ated well that is raster and that means that um you know it all these different kind of like boxes that have different colors on it we can't really use this from much inside you know we need like straight lines now if I go back to fusion and let's just place this sketch here let's go in and create another sketch did I place that right on the plane oh that does that okay and let's just draw a box like this extrude that one q4 extrude now I am able to inside of fusion I am able to extrude this so I can go in and hit it and then I can either make it positive I can actually also make it negative by dragging it in and we now have this in our block but notice this is important notice all the different kinds of lines or the text is broken up into these segments and that is kind of like you will see the a here for example it has one right here that is because it's this font pixelated fun that is kind of like projected down now it doesn't mean we can't machine it we can absolutely machine this inside of fusion but it's just important to know that that is kind of like what is happening so if you have an image like this a JPEG or PNG whatever you have and you want to to bring that into fusion and work with it well then you need to know that you are getting these pics elations here that is just you know it goes back to I mean it goes back to you know garbage in garbage out kind of thing there is software out there that tries to vectorize some of this stuff I have never had really great experience with it but there's some of them now we could of course as you I've done before we could go up here to insert and we could insert this as a decal for example and select that image or as a canvas I guess was maybe be the same kind of thing we could insert it like this year so now it's an image but what will we do with this well we can't really do anything with it because again it's an image either then of course we could right-click create a sketch oops let me rotate that around and we can start tracing this right so if you're following this live stream pretty well you know that we have different tools in here that we can go in and and kind of like create some different spline points on this area and then we can go in here we can kind of grab these spline points and we could kind of try to manipulate these spline points to kind of follow that outline in here of that part and get a spline that is somewhere close to it that's what we can do with an an image when we're bringing it in the two odds are the formats that you need to know about is if you go to the insert is SVG and and DXF so and I'm going to get into the tool path just in a second but I just think this is kind of important that you least you you know this so estimate SVG stands for I think standard vector graphics but what SVG is that that is actually a vector where the the picture we looked at before this is what we call raster but it's just like these different you know blocks that has different shading to it and it you know if it creates a picture SVG's becomes actually a a vector so there is lines and arcs into it let me just roll back here to - before we inserted the image now I did download some SVG's and DX app of the same thing now DXF is actually a Autodesk translation so DXF I think 1982 is something like that all this came out with this um the XF and it is it was created so other softwares could look at the AutoCAD drawings back in the eighties so it is literally coming from there but what it really this is just you know the another form of geometry a lot of lasers and plasma cutters and so forth like these DXF files so just so you know what it is but so if I go up here and say I want to insert a DX any SVG file and I go up and open that and ha funny enough I have an SVG file of the same one I had an image of isn't that just special so that comes in here now I can of course move it around with these handles you see me use that we've used those a ton and in other applications so we can kind of like drag it in here place it wherever we want and and hit ok now this sketch here I place it on the same I've been placed on at the top this sketch here is is actually geometry um that you can actually work with it's really just a bunch of splines but one of the things I noticed with this if you look at the G and and this has nothing to do with fusion this is just really actually I think if I go back out and open up the image you might even be able to see it there I don't know if it's gonna be too pixelated right around here but I could see it on the website by the way where do I get this I went to Google and I search free SVG and then it came up with love SVG and I thought that was interesting so I went out here and there's all different kinds of nahban playing around with my soon here there's all kinds of different SVG files that you can download for free so and I think when I looked at it here you can see the GE on their website I don't know how good that comes through with you but the G is already screwed up over here so these have nothing to do with fusion but of course now where it comes in is geometry we can actually go in here we can click on this and we can delete it right and you can delete some of this geometry and maybe try was fly and secrete something that maybe is a little bit better than that right honestly thank you so we can go in here we can work with with these entities and we can now create a spline that that kind of fits into into this ah the same thing if we went out and we used the DX app it's kind of like I don't really know of any differences between between that let's go back to bond here I also downloaded the DXF of this one so select the plane sketch the excel file bring that one in makes it comes in huge again like that is one of the things you're dealing with when you're working with you know with this kind of importing things of course the great thing is that it is again sketch geometry so I can use different different tools in here if I go in and edited the sketch I can actually go in here and I can scale it down with Fusion so I can select all of this and I can scale it way way down to whatever I want and then I can use the Move tool right and that way back to where it's the little bit so this is kind of like the same thing all right let me just plays this let's place this and then get into the camp ocean and talk a little bit about the different types of cam we can use with this so let's go out there let's go back into sketch these matter let's go point five nope - okay this is the great thing about me doing these live but I like I like to do these things live because that makes you see what I have to do so it's not all like a cooking show where I'm pulling things out of the oven all the time okay so now we have this this this is the DX app but the same thing as the SVG so what can we do with it from a a cam standpoint we have a couple of cool options inside of fusion let me get out of the sketch a couple of cool options in here so if I go into our cam workspace well that's kind of three different tool pads you can use to do engraving and I say that and then I think about us as well maybe that's more but primarily there is trace but XC will also work you know on curved surfaces you can see and then there is the engraving tool path in here now if we start with trace so selected oh I'm gonna probably create a setup right we're gonna set up it is Friday okay um trace let's make the tool and here's a little tip I want to share with you if you didn't know this scroll down to the bottom I'm gonna select the metric tools there's all these different tools in it now if you concern about what can I use for engraving up here that is this filter button called operation and if you click engraving and hit okay it would actually filter down to what tools right now in the tutorial library have heavy gravy tool so we can select one of these out of this is out of the standard tutorial library than you also have like this and then we can select our geometry and it will chain the area so you're gonna have two to select each chain manually you can't window in here oh and some yet maybe someday I don't know we don't need to select all these halls so this is like these ten change and hit OK and we get this engraving here now I wanted to get one tip and this is just my my preference when it comes to like engraving on on a machine I normally always engraved to the top of the surface when I did the cam so I did a lot of like marking parts for for customers so they had to have a little number on them that's one way you can use ingredient you can actually also use engraving if you want to to mark apart I don't know this is important to you but I one time had a scenario where I was making some parts I knew another company across country was making the exact same parts so we were producing the exact same parts now there's not would be some issues with some quality on these parts from the main customer was kind of complaining that some of them were not great so what I ended up doing was I used the engraving to put a tiny little engraving on the pot one place where I knew it would not matter on the function of the part nothing you would ever see that if you picked up the part like if you didn't know it was there you would never see it but that was the way that I made sure that you know when they started actually wanted blame somebody that we could be like it's not awesome but sorry I'm I'm getting sidetracked I always program to the face itself because if you have ever tried in great parts you know a couple of thousands death can really change how the whole engraving are looking so you know if you're going five thousands now I'm talking in in in in inches but if you're going five thousands of an inch versus ten thousands of an enduring grain we're gonna look completely different so I always prefer to just program it so Sarah and then out of the control I would just adjust the depth of that car so that was maybe a trick that hopefully you could find useful alright so here is the the toolpath now if we're going to simulate it hit play you will see that the tool is gonna follow our thing goodness it's Friday sign here um doesn't a marvelous job kind of like tracing around that now one of the things you will notice though if I own limit gonna turn the stock on and let's go and then change the color to I like ceramic of this shine seems like it's shining a lot tail so now you can kind of see how the cutter is kind of like well you got a little bit from here it looked like it was cutting out of sight it's cutting right on the line okay but of course it has kind of like that that taper well the depth of this cut right now is actually zero what you're seeing that we're cutting right now is the stock if I go in the NSA and its stock you will see that their axes by default in fusion if you're using better size stock there will be a millimeter if you're in metric and also that this is important right because this gives you a wrong visual if just hushed up on top of the part so I'm just going to change that and prove to you that I'm not lying go back in again and simulate now you will see that we don't we don't get anything but so here you can actually see the difference if we're doing it like this you will see the difference between you saw one millimeters if we do a half a millimeter of stock or this is the same as we lowered our cutter a half a millimeter you can kind of see how different it looks like this will be make a huge difference a half a millimeter when you're engraving can really make things look a lot different between looking professional and looking a little a little crappy so what I'm trying to get at with this is that the trade to a trace tool path will just follow right on the line and there's no depth to it okay there is no depth to the end it's just going to machine right down to wherever that line is um and that's actually that's actually fine for for this kind of work right here maybe but the developers wanted to do a little bit better than that because sometimes if you're a pro of your engraving like machine parts you don't really want to use like fat letters like this you don't want you don't want it to to have like double lines so if I go back in oops now I clicked on fusion five times I know my mistake sorry if we go in here and we're looking at at this you maybe don't want to you know see how here on the F how it's kind of like following lying down here fell over here maybe don't look too professional of you doing like CNC parts now what you of course can do with this is we can go into the model environment and we can hit Q just like we did below text before and we can now select this text and we can now cut it - into the parts now just like I said before with the text we get a lot of funky kind of move or like lines depending on what kind of text you're bringing in but this is where in the cam environment that the engraving tool path is is hot what the engraving tool path will do I'm gonna use the same cutter and let's just select the outline here of the part and many times you know what I'm doing this I just hit okay and let's see what we get now what the engraving tool path will do it and if you look at the if the lines you might think they look weird well it will actually it actually looks at the width of the letters and that just the cutter depth depending on the width of the letters this is uh this is pretty neat let's try to play this through here now you will see the card apart we're gonna go pretty deep right now but you see how it's actually carving out the total center of our letters here okay so what do I mean about it we'll adjust the depth well it will actually adjust like where between in the F here you can kinda like see how it's wide up here so there's a flat spot where when it's narrow here and here it actually races it up so the engraving tool append inside of fusion will actually adjust the height the Z height as is machining around and giving you a lot cleaner type of tool path that oh I guess I should say depending on what you want right because our trays you know our tres is definitely I would not say that that's a bad bad tool path whatsoever it's just following the line around and gives us kind of like I don't know a two-dimensional kind of nice layout of this and if this is what you you want um if this is what you want to end up with then well you won right um don't let me be the one telling you not to use it but what is nice about the other engraving is that that will actually carve out all the material between inside the letters and and and and what is nice about this is if you have ever done machining like in the past many times when cat's off a cam software you have to find like a stick font that you had to install into the machine so like stick front means like a single line font and and use that so you could just trace down the center of the letters and now suddenly you have these capabilities with this engraving so to toolpath you should definitely know about the trace and the engraving two different tool paths doing kind of like some some cool stuff you know writing that now you can of course also use some of the other tool pads I'm not saying that you're not allowed to use the other ones and we could absolutely in here I use a a 2d adaptive clearing to machine this out but then it becomes more of I would say a pocket operation versus I don't even know what the smallest flat end mill I have I don't know if it will fit in there it will not do to do what's the smallest that may be a ball and mill in here that we could absolutely you know start selecting you know the pots like this looks like the chain maybe is a little screwed up but we could start machining the department's out here this is maybe not a good example to use on yeah it definitely looks like that if that doesn't like this alright here we go so um you know you could definitely do something like this not as a ball in mill I'm not recommending you're using this one but you could definitely use this to create a a pocket for this if if you want to right so they we have the tee one last thing I just wanted to show you too that is one other tool path that is that you can use if you have like a five axis machine and that is the multi axis contour kind of meant for the same thing to be able to engrave on curved on curved surfaces like this and it's actually pretty easy to setup what defy but but this tool pack will do is it will stay normal to the curved surface okay I know that there's only a few people in here will probably may be using that type of machine so that's why I'm just kind of like keep it more quick but let's select a things like that same one millimeter behold earlier and we can drive and it's going to do the same thing as the trace kind of does it's just gonna stay on the center of this here and then that will that will machine gun that will machine the this part here with the five axis kind of like movement around here okay that was kind of like what I had planned on showing I hope that it kind of like makes sense between the JPAC the raster to vector uh then you know something that is like photo pixelated you know the software can't really drive that so you're gonna have to go in and trace it but SVG if DX F is your solution you could for example use something like illustrator is something that I have I have used a lot in the past where I had well I didn't use it I requested the tax from my customer they said if you illustrated gave me an SVG file or what the excel file and that was what we drove for for any artwork I hope this was kind of useful enlightening at least now you kind of know what these engraving tools inside of fusion can do alright it is Friday we're gonna end this at the one thing I gotta say though before I forget so next week we definitely gonna do some live streams but I can't quite guarantee that I'm gonna be on Monday or Tuesday so I'm gonna have to wing that one I I have to I am moving office what it's exciting in itself um but so just know that if I'm not on Monday Tuesday that I you know I have to skip out down in the description area of the video my email address and if your topic you would like to see shoot me an email about it also now where this came from I should also tell you that the CNC handbook is down there and let me just quickly remind you then Autodesk University is coming up next month in Las Vegas and the whole cam team will be there there's gonna be a bunch of cam classes there is actually a specific day track that was created just for cam users so you don't have to buy for the whole three days you can just buy for one day pass um you know if there's something you're interested in I didn't leave a link send me an email and I send you some information about that I will be there meet you for breakfast or something like that if you if you make it out to Las Vegas next month um I think it's the week of the twelfth I think okay guys yes there is a cost with with Autodesk University I gotta say that okay um that's it I'm gonna I'm gonna celebrate weekend I have a beer in my fridge with my name on it they'll be open and about an hour so hope you have an awesome weekend too and I'm gonna do what I normally do I'll in the broadcast here guys I hope you have an awesome awesome weekend I'll jump into the nationís I had everybody take care

Channel: Lars Christensen

Views: 156,343

Keywords: Autodesk, Autodesk Fusion 360, Fusion 360, Design, CAM, CNC, Tip, Beginner, Lars Christensen, #LarsLive, akn_include, Engraving, Manufacturing, Art

Id: uOkIYfrszHA

Length: 30min 44sec (1844 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2017