Introduction: CAM Setup 2

About: Michael Koehle is the CNC shop assistant at Autodesk Pier 9. His background is in engineering and in art. He combines these to make work using drawing, painting, CNC, 3D printing, and laser cutting.

In the next few lessons, you will create toolpaths for the back side of the workpiece. Anytime you move a part in the machine or reset your WCS, you need to create a new setup.

1) Click Setup 1 so the stock and WCS appear, and then carefully flip the spoon in the view window by orbiting or clicking the corner of the View Cube where Top, Back, and Right intersect. The WCS should now appear in the front bottom left corner.

You've just flipped the part away from you. You want to make sure you're doing this correctly because of the way the registration holes are designed. For instance, if you accidentally flipped the part sideways (with the head of the spoon on the left side)--either in the CAM software or in real life when you get to the DMS--your registration holes would not align with the holes in the spoiler board.

2) Right click the Home icon next to the View Cube>Set current view as Home>Fixed distance.

3) Click Setup in the ribbon.

4) Click the top back left corner node to reposition the WCS.

Note that the Z-axis is pointing down, which does not obey the Right Hand Rule.

5) To flip the Z axis, click the head of the Z arrow.

6) Click the Stock tab.

7) Change Mode to Fixed Size Box.

8) Click the Post Process tab.

9) Change the program number to 100002.

The DMS only accepts six-digit numbers, and it's a good system to align program numbers with setup numbers. That is: Setup 1, 100001. Setup 2, 100002, etc.

10) Click OK to generate Setup 2.

11) Hover your mouse over Setup 2, and notice that there's a black dot that says "Activate Setup/Folder." This means that Setup 2 is your active setup, and any new toolpaths you create will go into this setup.