CamBam - Tutorial : Drilling

Insert some text. For a laugh, today I did a single character ‘N’ using WingDings font. This just happens to be a natty jolly roger.

Set the text height to 200 (I’m working in mm here).

Drilling mops work on point lists, so to get some nice quick point lists, select the text object then select Insert->Point List->Geometry Fill (Offset). This will prompt you for a step distance. Enter 2 here and press enter.

You should now have created a bunch of points that fill the selected geometry (excluding any holes in regions and text).

With the point lists selected, now do CAM->Drill.

Under the drill mop properties, set ToolDiameter to 1.5 and the target depth to -3.

That’s pretty much it! To make things clearer, you can right click on the Default layer in the file tree and select ‘hide’.

You should now just see a bunch of circles indicating the drilling hole sizes.

Right Click on machining in the file tree to generate the gcode.

Here’s one I prepared earlier.

This is the aluminium cover off an ICY BOX external USB hdd enclosure. Should look neat with some LEDS behind it.

Most geometry can be used to generate point lists. Try experimenting with the other Insert->Pointlist options.

I’m sure you’ll figure out what they do.

Have Fun!