Learn FreeCAD: #13 Engraving - Tutorial

hey guys this is Christopher and in his free cat tutorial I will be continuing in the path workbench and show you how to use the engrave tool so normally at this point we would go into the part design and make a design and then maybe extrude it and trade it created two whole paths from that but actually we're going to start in the draft workbench instead I've already created this in part design but I'm going to use draft to create the lines the shape strings that we'll be using for the engrave so even if you've never been in the draft workbench before it's one that's used less common you can still probably tell what all of these tools do they're just like in the sketcher they do lines you can do circles polygons rectangles whatever but there are a bunch of new ones too anyway oftentimes when you're engraving you'll be engraving text and that's one thing that the draft has that the regular sketcher doesn't but regardless if you're doing text or not you're gonna have to use the draft workbench for engraving so with whatever you'd like to engrave whether it's text or shapes and create that on the face that you'd like to engrave before you go back to the path workbench now for me I'll be putting some text on here and I'll just click anywhere here on my face it gives me my x y&z coordinates but I can actually edit it later I think it'll be easier so I'll just basically click anywhere on my face type in the string this would be the text that I want to display hit enter I'll just keep the default height that default tracking again I can edit that later and I think it'll be easier now the path to the font file this will have to be installed on your computer as a dot TTFN you can find free fonts all over the internet normally when you're graving it's best to keep two simpler fonts but you just go ahead and click on the dots find the file that you're looking for make sure it's a dot - ETF and then open it up that's the last option we need and it is displaying your text now now I'm going to come back to my model and with my shape string selected here's all of the data now this string I can actually change this to whatever I want hit enter and it goes changes updates automatically so another important one the size and actually going to change this bigger and you'll notice that it is adjusting the height this plaque that I have designed already is two inches high and I set this to a half of an inch so you'd think that the height would be a quarter of this height but it's not it looks more like maybe one inch so half that distance not only sure why but it seems like every time you set the size of your font it's always twice what you set it to anyway it's one inch high you sort of have to take that factor of two into consideration with your text I'll leave tracking at zero and the placement is the last thing that we need to edit my position I'll leave my Z at zero because it's resting right on the face of my part which is what I want and X I'll put at zero and y at 0.5 and that looks pretty centered it is centered up and down as far as I can tell and it could go to the right a little bit so I'll just bump this 100 thousands over and I think that looks good you could play around more with the centering maybe just some more accurate measuring but that looks good and I'm ready to go back into path this is where the engraving happens and I'm actually going to hide the body that it's resting on it won't be useful for the engraving now before I start doing any of my toolpaths i'll come up here to check out my tools not using any of these for just my v-bit engraving tool and it has a cutting angle of 30 degrees you can use all kinds of different engraving tools but most of them are small and angled like that anyway I'm going to create my job and at this point and all my other tutorials what I would have done is just hit OK because we've only ever had one body but now we have a body and shape string so here are options the body and the shape string the text or any other draft that you created it could be lines other shapes that will be your shape string your draft is your shape string again I don't have a template so I will go with that I was creating this stock around our text not around the plaque that I had behind it if you're using the plaque you would have selected body instead and then you would select geometry from the body but our text is not on the body anyway I'm going to leave all of these extensions the way they are except for a Z I'm going to change this to 0 what that does is changes so that the top of my stock is perfectly in line with my text and I will do an eighth of an inch extending out of the bottom my origins before I want it so I can move on to my tools add a tool controller for the one I have set up for in grading and then remove my default tool here I would put my feeds and speeds in but it's necessary I'm not actually cutting this out but if you were cutting it you would and put that data here so in our job we have our tool looks good and we are ready to then create an operation the engrave in operation right here will be asking for base geometry just like the rest of them and the base geometry is going to be each of these lines this font is segmented into a bunch of lines and arcs so I just need to go through making sure I'm clicking control and select all of these lines it's a bit meticulous but that is how to get the path so all of my contours are selected I can add them to my base geometry and they all show up right here for my depths I'm going to leave this dart depth zero which is the top of my stock the final depth I will engrave this negative 30 thousandths and that my unit because sometimes it will change step down the that size is bigger than my final depth so I mean it'll just take it in one pass Heights are okay and the operation there's no a whole lot of options I have the tool that I want and I'm starting at zero so I'll apply check out what it looks like it sort of made a copy down 30 thousands below for the tool path and that's what we want okay and now I'm actually going to hide my original shape string and we can see our tool paths right here it's got one pass on top of the stalk and now 130-thousand s below and we'll see what it does in our simulation shows our stock I'm actually gonna turn the accuracy down a little bit and go ahead and test it actually one thing I'd like to point out beforehand is in our tool list it says that the engraver has a 30 degree taper on it to it so it comes to a point but it's not showing it right here even though it doesn't look like it has a point it actually does take that into consideration and it will look like it's cutting with a point and you'll see that right now so the accuracy were turned up you would look a lot cleaner but you can see that the path the thickness is a lot thinner as if we're acting as a tool with a thinner point like I supposed to again there's some deformities and stuff on the surface but that's what we're dealing with lower accuracy if you just turned it up you'd probably see a better finish and the accuracy in the simulation has no effect over how it renders the g-code it's just simulation so you can see what's happening anyway it is engraving the way I want it I can show this body that's what it would look like and you can use this method for text or again you could just use it for circles and squares and other polygons or whatever profiles you draw up in the draft workbench but it's it's a lot different than the other tools which go off of bodies instead this engrave uses the shape string in the draft workbench so I hope this is useful if it is don't forget to Like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next tutorial thanks for watching

Channel: Invent Box Tutorials

Views: 37,255

Keywords: FreeCAD, engineering, tutorial, model, drafting, version, 0.17, path, profile, sketch, tool, beginner, learn, 2019, toolpath, contour, setup, sheet, controller, g-code, gcode, g code, CNC, cnc, milling, mill, tooling, cut, cutting, router, endmill, body, m code, inventbox, invent, CAD, depth, rpm, feed, speed, how to, engraving, engraver, vbit, v-bit

Id: s3h2Hxk8JFo

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 26 2019