From the course: Fusion 360: CNC Topographic Site Models

Engraving paths - Fusion 360 Tutorial

From the course: Fusion 360: CNC Topographic Site Models

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Engraving paths

- [Instructor] Now we're ready to add in our final site detail, the etched-in paths and sports areas. So you'll remember a few lessons ago, we turned off our engraving layers in our main model but we're going to go ahead and turn those back on and use this line work as the path for our tool to follow. So at this point, you might be thinking oh, if I want to engrave this line work onto my site model, I can use the Engrave toolpath strategy. Unfortunately, engrave is not the best toolpath to use for a project like this. You'll notice that it's under the 2D strategies, which means it can't really understand where line work is in 3D space. If we were to use that toolpath, it would follow our line work exactly where it is in space and not actually cut into our site model. What we really need is to project this line work down onto our site model. To do this, we should actually use a strategy called Project under 3D right here. So as the name suggests, this toolpath projects your flat line work down onto your 3D topographic site model. So it can understand that a single flat line might have to travel over several different surfaces that are all at different heights. So let's go ahead and select that. And the first thing we want to do is change out our tool. So I'm going to go to Select. And I'm going to select that 1/16 inch diameter end mill that we made a few lessons ago. So I'm going to let you in on a little secret here though. I don't actually plan on using a 1/16 inch diameter flat end mill in real life for this path. I plan on using a 3/16 inch diameter, 30-degree chamfer bit, also know as an engraving bit. This end mill can create a much crisper line than a flat end mill could as you can see here in this final painted product. You could use a 1/16 inch diameter flat end mill if you'd like but it's just going to create a thicker line. So it's really just a visual personal preference. All right, well, if I plan on using a chamfer bit, why don't I just create that tool in my tool library and use it on this project path? Unfortunately, Fusion doesn't allow you to plug in a chamfer bit for a project path and I'm not quite sure why this is but if you do try to select a chamfer bit for this strategy, it will just error out and won't let you calculate the path. So for now, we're just going to select out 1/16 inch. Now, you might remember a few lessons ago that I didn't actually plug in any specific tool sizing information into this end mill and that's because I never plan on actually using the specific tool in real life. I did plug in the correct spindle speed and feed rates that I'd like to use for my chamfer bit though so none of these are going to change for now. So the 1/16 inch diameter end mill is really just a placeholder that best represents my real-world tool while still working within the limitations of my program. Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, let's go on to our geometry. So it's asking us to select our curves to follow and we can go ahead and just select this entire layer. There we go. And the next thing that I'd like to do is actually check this Avoid Surfaces. So if you look on the top view, this line work right here travels all the way to the edge of our building and if our tool were to travel exactly along these paths, that tool and probably the collet would crash into our massing right here, so we actually want to offset those paths just a little bit away from this mass right here. And this avoid touch surfaces feature allows you tool to step away from these taller features on your site. So it's asking us to select something to avoid and that's going to be our building top. So with those three selected, it's also asking us for the distance to offset away from that building and just to be safe, I'm going to set this to be about an inch. Okay, and that's the only thing that I'm going to change on geometry and I'm going to skip over my heights just because for this particular tool strategy, the heights aren't so important because we're really just focused on projecting down to these individual surfaces. Next, I'm going to go onto passes and the only thing I'm going to change here is my axial offset. So right now, that axial offset is set to zero and what that means is that this line work is going to be projected down exactly to the surface of our model, which means that our tool is just going to follow a path that is exactly on top of our surface but we don't want that. We exactly want our chamfer bit to cut in just a little bit to our surface. So what we're going to plug in here is actually a negative number. I think I'm going to set this to -.02. And that way, we're projecting just a little bit below each one of those surfaces. All right, so those are the only things that I'm going to change on this strategy and I'm just going to hit OK. All right, let's turn off our sketches for now and you'll notice, if we look at this in the side view, that our toolpaths are projected just below our surfaces right here and that's why we set that axial offset. Our line work is just .02 inches below our surface. You'll also notice that our toolpaths have avoided the edge of our building right here. So it's not coming up all the way to that edge. The only thing left to do is to simulate everything and make sure it all looks good. So with everything selected, I'm just going to go over to Simulate. All right, and I'm going to skip over to our path right here. Turn on my stock. And skip all the way to the end here. All right, so you can see that our line work was projected just below our surface right here and the line looks pretty thick but remember, we're not using our 1/16 inch diameter end mill, we're using our chamfer bit. So this'll look a little bit different in real life. You also might notice that the quality of this render is a little chunky and if you want a better view of what this will look like in real life, you can change the quality from medium to extreme. All right, so this is shaping up to be a beautiful model and all that's left to do is to cut away our stock material from our site model.

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