Howdy Fusion Forums! Perhaps this is a better question for the Electronics area, but it's CAM-centric so here we are. I've been playing with Fusion's new PCB tools, and would like to mill out the copper traces. But I'm having trouble finagling the toolpaths to be correct and efficient.
Here's a super-simple example part and a 3D Pocket operation:
At first glance this looks great, but it's actually taking two passes per slot, one for the right side and one for the left side. This makes 100% sense in regular machining context, where you want nice clean edges on both sides of a cut. But on a PCB that's unnecessary, and it's doubling the machining time. I only need one pass.
For what it's worth, I got this toolpath to work by setting the tool 0.001" smaller than the width of the slot. If the selected tool is exactly the width of the cut, it won't generate at all. If it's a thou smaller, I get two passes. So, I'm stuck between 0 and 2 passes, when I just want a 1-pass slot!
Now, I know I could achieve a 1-pass slot by using a 2D Contour instead of a 3D Pocket. However, there are three issues:
- The biggest issue: 2D Contour isn't Model-Aware, so it'll happily cut right through other traces on my PCB
- 3D Pocket handles rest machining beautifully, letting me use a big (relatively speaking) end mill to cut the majority of the PCB, and then come in with a tiny tool to clean up narrow areas. Can't get this to work as well with 2D Contour.
- 2D Contour makes me select each trace manually, whereas 3D Pocket just needs a bounding box and figures out the rest. On big/complicated boards, 2D Contour would be repetitive and prone to human error.
So, in summary, I'd love to convince 3D Pocket that it can single-pass the slots on my PCB. Maybe this isn't possible? Maybe there's another CAM Op I can use instead? In any case, thanks for reading this far, cheers!
