I have a few plates coming up I need to mill on both sides.. I was wondering if anyone had a tut. / demo video using Sketchucam doing a two sided milling job? What would the best method for flipping the part and alignment be on the C-beam machine? Here is the stl of the next plate I want to make...
hmmm, that is a good topic for a demo video! in summary, you need to mirror the part around the center line, set the X-Y zero point on that center line, and have some way of accurately positioning the part when you turn it over. I do this by creating a drawing that drills 2 holes on the centerline, but outside the part on the material. These holes will go through the material into the table, and must be sized for accurate fitting dowels. Now use the 'set 0,0 offset' SketchUcam tool to set the 0,0 point to the center of the lower hole. Do the drawing, copy and paste it, and flip it horizontally. Now add cuts for side one on the first and cuts for side 2 on the second, making sure you put the outline cut on the 2nd drawing. (-: Don't forget to arrange some alignment lines so you can always place the safearea in the correct place. I did it by drawing the material size. I have attached an example file and the 3 Gcode files that arise from it. 1 - use flip0.nc with a 6mm drill bit, it will drill 15mm deep, through the 6mm material and into the table place the 6mm dowels in the holes. 2 - change to a 3mm bit , set Z zero to the top of the material, and cut file1.nc 3 - flip the part horizontally on the dowels, clamp it down, and cut file2.nc (I suggest trying this with a chunk of foam, my files are not multipass and feed rates are HIGH) if you don't want to drill your normal table, you can always clamp on a subtable and drill that, so long as it is clamped by itself so that removing and replacing the material will not let it move.
