FreeCAD CAM Tips - 7 || Cutting a sheet of plywood on the CNC || Path Workbench

[@tcurdt]

Keeping the faces of the cutout is a neat shortcut. If selecting negative spaces would be possible that would be even nicer though.

[@superdau]

You don't have to change the tool diameter to "fit" in between. I think that's really messy, because it changes every operation that uses this tool. Instead just assign a negative "Extra Offset" (e.g. 0.01 mm) at the specific profile operation. The result is the same. No need for extra parameters in a spreadsheet or formulas in tool's properties.

[@opensourcecnc]

I have tried that, too. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. So for now that's the only way that I found to work. As a rule for myself, I prefer to set a tool bit in the job especially for this.

[@superdau]

@@opensourcecnc That's weird. I just tried it again (in FreeCAD 0.21.1 on Windows) and it worked. I've also used that for a long time. But OK, if you have your workflow and you're fine with it, there's no need to change it. It might work for other people as well though, and it is generally good to know that the profile offset feature exists as it has other use cases than making an endmill fit (like cutting a part slightly oversize, if you know that you'll sand it for example).