Fusion 360 CAM for CNC Programming Production Parts

CURT CHAN: Really quick, so my name is Curt Chan. I'm a Technical Evangelist at Autodesk. I've been working on the fusion team for quite some time. And I'm doing to introduce Jeff Hooper in a second. But just a show of hands, who here has ran a CNC machine? OK, so a fair amount of people.

Now who here is actually making money off their CNC machine? So less people. Great. Who here wants to make money off their CNC machine? We've got some more people. Great. So the plan here is to really-- over the years of AU, this is my fourth time at AU, and we've always had the Autodesk employees to teach a lot of the classes. And this year we really wanted to focus on having a lot of our customers teach the class.

Because I can sit here and make it look sexy and take your money. But if you can hear it from a customer and they can show you exactly how they actually apply Fusion, just in everyday, right? If it's from prototyping, because I do a lot of prototyping, or to production level. And if you haven't heard of Backhand Bikes, definitely check them out on YouTube, on Twitter. Twitter handle @Backhandbikes. As well as Instagram.

And if you're a machinist, definitely use a hashtag, #instantmachinist, we're a big fan of that as well. So with that said, I'm going to let Jeff kick it off. And we're going to be tag teaming back and forth. But I think it would be great to hear his perspective and tips and tricks on how he's used Fusion to go from prototype as well as production. So Jeff?

JEFF HOOPER: Well there certainly is a lot of people here. I'm used to standing in front of my machine, kind of by myself. John and I joke about how much time we spend by ourselves and talking to ourselves. Anyway, this class mainly focuses on if you have a part that you've already designed in your manufacturing, and it's a prototype. And how can you use Fusion in a way where you can move from prototyping a product you've designed into production, saving a lot of time. Not just in Fusion, but also in your shop.

And I put the most ridiculous thing that-- because I'm like, I'm going to lose somebody because I'm going to be boring or something. So a little bit about me for what applies to what we're going to talk about today. I look a little younger than I am, but I've been doing this 20 years, and my dad had a shop. And I was driving my little three-wheeler around in the chips when I was three years old or whatever.

I worked for GibbsCAM, I used CATIA. I ran an aerospace company. And used CATIA for all the five-axis programming. I've used NX, Mastercam, Featurecam. I've worked as an instructor. I've started job shops where I drew up the building, picked out the CNC machine tools, designed the products, designed the fixtures, programmed all the parts, set them up, and then ran them. Pretty much, the only thing I didn't do is put the parts in a box. They at least had somebody to do that for me.

So I set up production shops. I've recently set up a prototype shop called-- if you've ever seen a fire hydrant, then I developed their prototyping facility for manufacturing anything that gets cast in iron. So I'm mainly cutting Styrofoam honestly.

And then when I go home, this is me at the house. That's actually a garage door above me, and that's the neighborhood. That machine did crack my garage floor, but it's running and making parts. And this is a little bit about Mueller. That product was designed and rendered inside of Fusion, it's a little backpack and it detects water pressure and all kinds of stuff.

So I'm using Fusion a lot in my day job, and also when I go home with Backhand Bikes. Renders, here's some of the products, some sculpting. So you know, I love the renders because I can get an idea of what people like.

So it's really good for product development. So what this class is going to be mainly about is moving from product development into how do I start making these things in a production-style machine shop? And what kind of mindset may need to change when I'm moving from prototyping, like 3D printing, to actually manufacturing and making money with it?

Let's see, I don't know what's going-- OK, so there's a different. You know, right now, we're probably all doing a lot of prototyping and doing production. And one thing is in common, or two things, that you're always thinking about. Either one is how much time does it take? And quality.

But when it comes to prototyping in production, those are actually completely opposites. Whenever you're running a prototyping job, you're far more concerned with your quality. Because you have how many pieces of material? Like one or two pieces of material. And if you scrap it, you just lost all the time that day, and now you've got to get in the truck, drive down, and go get some more material.

With production, you're far more interested in how long it takes to run the part and less interested in scrapping it? If you scrap one, like a tool breaks or it gets dull, and you start getting out of tolerance, you pick it up and you throw it in the garbage, and you pick up another piece of stock, you hit go, and you just keep on going.

Of course, I just kind of made up those numbers, but you get the idea. You're far more interested in time on production.

I've got to watch this and figure out where I'm at. So the shop. So what can we talk about that's not necessarily software related that could help us around the shop just keeping conscious of our time? Now when I was starting that production shop, my boss walked in and said, OK, I like this building. Man, I like this wall here. We're just going to put machines down the wall, and when somebody comes in, they're going like, wow, look at all these machines sitting in here making parts. And he's imagining all these people busy and running around, and I'm like, I got something else planned.

Because each of those machines has a particular cycle time. And three people, I mean, how much is a person worth? When you factor in, do they want insurance? Do you have workers' comp? Are you paying taxes on that person? And how much does a machine cost?

My machine at my house is $3 an hour. And that's just for eight hours a day, 20 days a week. Now you could have a big machine, and it might be what? $10 an hour. But then, let's say you ran that machine on two shifts, well, you'd be back down to five, mine would be $1 a half an hour. Next to that person that's standing in front of it. And that person's taking up 30 dollars an hour.

And each of those have a cycle time. Maybe one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes. It's completely possible in a production shop to have that many people running one part and programming it and setting it up. But in a production shop, you want to maximize your automation.

So when I set up my production shop, that's me. I was very busy, but I had eight CNC machines, not just three. But in this scenario, one person could program, set up a machine, run it, change all their offsets, and finally get a good part. And then they would drop one more piece of stock in there, and hit go, and walk to the next machine.

And they would program that machine, set it up, get one good part that's in tolerance, throw another piece of stock in there, hit go, turn around, do the same thing to the machine. And after they get all the machines running, even though they've sat idle maybe for a little while, while they set up the other machines, the person can just go around and around. And one person would be more efficient than three in this scenario, because one person is thinking how long that cycle is going to be. And then they're going to go over and try to get this part changed out in time for that one to end. And they're going to start turning it into a game if they're motivated. I was motivated.

So the definition of production is that you're setting up and you're solving all the problems in the front end, and you don't need to continue to solve all the problems every time you run another part or set a part up.

So for instance, that guy, he was just in that little cell, the machine shop, and he just set up that first part. So what did he do? He changed his spindle override, his rapid override, for each tool probably. And tweaked it in, and then at the top, you can notice, he changed his height offsets, and his diameter offsets.

If every time you set up this part, that's what you had to do, then you're wasting a half an hour or an hour trying to tweak out that part and getting it right the next time you run it.

So what we can do is take those numbers, those offsets, and go ahead and plug them back into Fusion. And then when you go up to your machine, you repost your program, and you zero out all your offsets. So every time you run that job, you don't have to go back and reset up your offsets.

And notice I've got a negative number in there, and that's completely acceptable inside of Fusion. You can have a negative number for your axial or your radial compensation.

So shop documentation. So you've set up this machine, and it's running your part. You know it's doing a great job. You've already zeroed out your offsets. You need to be able to set it up like that every time. And you don't need to go through opening up Fusion again, right? Fusion's an awesome tool, and I'm not detracting you from it, but it's already done its job. It doesn't need to keep doing the same job over and over, right?

So by creating some shop documentation, you hit that button right there, it creates an HTML file, and you get a little P&G that's going to have your visualization of your part and where your work coordinate offset is. You're going to take that, print it out. You're going to put it in a filing cabinet with the blueprint, with every piece of information you could ever need on which tolerances are crucial.

And that way, next time you go and you set up this part, you walk up to the drawer, you open it up, and you pull out your blueprint, it's got your, all your offsets are already plugged into your program. Right here you've got a drawer with all the custom tools it takes. A radius cutters or whatever custom tools you have.

And then right next to that, if you're running a lot of production, you can set up a little computer or maybe have Dropbox. That's what I used when I did this. And I had all my documentation in there. All my G codes for every machine that I could possibly run this part on in the shop already posted out, with my offsets that I saved.

And then I also do a screen shot or a video of the simulation. So next time, if I set this up, or let's say, what I used to tell my boss, let's say I get hit by a bus, and I can't come in the next day. Somebody could walk up, pull out the folder, watch and at least have some kind of security that the tools coming down here, that's correct. That's what I'm looking at here on my iPad. I'm watching the video simulation. And all their offsets are already solved. So any tweaking they do is going to be very, very minor.

So that was my little spiel on how to manage a shop when you're thinking about doing a repeat job over and over again.

So now we're going to get on to Fusion, and I'm going to be a little demo. I tried to do this as a presentation, but it's not going to have a good effect. It would get super boring. So when you're using Fusion to set up a production job, really it's an amazing tool. When I work for GibbsCam, one thing that I would have to do is, they would design their fixtures, and they would have their part designed, and they would have all that inside of SolidWorks or something like that.

And then they would export that out, and they would put it inside of GibbsCAM, and then they would start cutting their part or developing their tool path. And then they'd find out there was a problem, and the fixture needed to be changed. Well, then they'd export out that part and re-import it in, and then the guy that's running the GibbsCAM or the other Cam software has to re-associate all that tool path back onto the part.

So an area that Fusion really shines is the ability to have full CAD and full CAM all working together. That can't be-- nothing else is really going to compare to that kind of associativity. You can make major changes, and you get to keep your associativity with your model and your tool path. And you don't have to go back and re-select all that stuff.

As a job shop owner, 90% of my work comes in because another shop said, we can't do it. We can't design a part and make it, and do it for what you want to pay for it. I get a lot of jobs like that, where they really need somebody to be able to reverse engineer a part and make a custom jig or something like that.

So that definitely comes in handy with workholding, and then we're going to talk about some cutting strategies that can save you a lot of time, especially when it comes to linking and entry moves and the flow of the tool. Fusion does a fantastic job, but there's little things you can do to really cut a lot of time out. If you've got 2,500 pieces you're going to run, every second counts. Because at the end of the week, you could save a day.

And then some posting and editing that are also save you a lot of time. Let's see, what's going on-- I don't know why I did that. I just had that part there. I was like, hey, look at this. OK, so workholding. Now whenever I'm thinking about workholding and I'm going to make 1,000 of these parts, this goes to a Gibson guitar. And I got this job because the machine shop that took it couldn't do it fast enough. They were taking seven minutes apiece to make these little they're quarter-inch but they had nine tool changes in them.

A lot of little detail, a lot of radiuses, a 10,000 radius. I was making them in a minute and a half with a machine that was half as fast as theirs. Because I designed a fixture. I got Mightybytes in there. I designed the fixture in Fusion. I'm sitting there. I got my little Mac book Air, you know. And I designed the fixture. I drop in the parts that Gibson sent me, and then made sure all the tools cleared.

And a lot of things that I like to think of-- one major thing I like to think about is-- well, everything. From where material hits the floor to when it's in my machine. If you notice I have these things in strips, because handling all these little pieces would be a bear. Right? I'll leave them in long strips. I don't have to [INAUDIBLE] them. The machine is fantastic at that.

Not only do I not have to [INAUDIBLE] them, but I don't have to line them all up and try to get them in there just right. I can just drop them in, and then let it go.

Also grouping the parts gives you an opportunity to do one cut, and then when that tool comes down to do a cut, it doesn't cut one part. It cuts four parts, or eight parts, or however many parts that one cut can come across. And for instance, going around this, you can go around all four parts in one hit. So you end up saving a lot of time by grouping them.

Also fixturing. It's not uncommon to see somebody with a lot of double clamping vices, which is good. If you're doing-- if you have a part that has maybe two or three operations, you can do custom jaws in every one of those vices. So that right there would probably give me, I think, four hours of runtime in a fixture you just saw. If I put one of those fixtures in every jaw, but then I'd have to make a lot of custom jaws and everything.

Or you could have a rotary. Rotaries come in handy for production. Because it's actually rotating your table. And then, I'm sure a lot of you guys are already doing this kind of work. But you can make it as long as you want. You can make as many sides as you want. You can do auxiliary operations.

But that's not necessarily all there is, because if you have a part with six operations on it. Like, I think Brandon has a part back there, and he's thinking about getting it four axis. Instead of doing a bunch of [INAUDIBLE] and running op one on all of them, and then changing out all the jaws and running op two, and then changing out all the jaws, and running op three.

Right with a four-axis, you can grab it one time and rotate the part. Index it around and do all of those. So it's like, you can imagine, taking all your vices on your table, and pushing them over. And it's just the four axis that indexes it. So you really are getting multiple operations, but we might have to change the way we think about what multiple operations is.

You can run four parts at a time, on op one, or you can get a four axis and put it in there, and run four operations at a time.

Cutting strategies. OK, so we kind of already touched on this. This is not a tool path that Fusion really offers. It can do a really good job at this, but whenever I'm programming a part for production, I think of every second. I think of where my tool inners and traces, and then notice how it's got these little green linking moves? I didn't draw that. But I actually physically drew the tool path that you see in the middle of the part.

Whenever a machine is rapiding down, or moving in any linear direction, it has to decelerate and then accelerate. So every 90-degree corner is killing you on time because it has to come to a stop. It's handing off from one server motor to another. So every time you have a 90-degree corner, it's costing you time.

Having radiuses allows that handoff between those two server motors to happen simultaneously. So just by drawing in some tool path, adding in your own radiuses, even vertically. I don't know what I got going on here. I got some crazy. OK, one pass cut, yeah, that's what we're talking about. I don't know why I'm doing all this. Try to keep some attention. Yeah, that one's cutting all of those parts, yeah. Yeah, these segue ways take for-- ah, there it is.

No one is going to sleep in here. Something better happen here. I'm going to hit the button. there we go. Sketching and tracing tool path. So when I'm sketching it, I'm using that tracing option. For instance, this instead of sawing the parts, we mentioned we're putting them in there. I've got a nice smooth radius coming down, so that machine goes from a rapid into a radius, and immediately starts cutting these things apart.

And I've drawn in little radiuses, and I had to make thousands of these parts. So I did put a little bit of time into this. And that's up to you how much time you can invest and actually programming your part and getting every second out of it. But this, I was going to be running this for probably a month. And so I cut out every second. And made them as cheap as, made them as fast and as inexpensive as I could.

All right, I think that's-- I think I'm going to have to-- yeah, and I did the same thing vertically here. This is a plastic part. If I took that in one pass, the plastic would end up deflecting because I'm past my tangency point. It would end up just pushing the plastic off and cracking the part. So I had to come up with a quick way to take small bites that would eliminate that. And so I came up with this little sketching in my tool path.

I don't know what's going to happen next, but-- yeah linking. There's no way to demonstrate linking. OK, so--

CURT CHAN: Really quick--

JEFF HOOPER: OK.

CURT CHAN: As he gets set up. Who here is not using Fusion? It's OK, don't be shy. All right. So, who's here using like HSMWorks. All right? How about an Inventor HSM? Anybody using some of our DelCam products? OK, great. Anything else that I didn't mention, I mean like, other? No others? Like a MasterCAM or a GibbsCAM? Scan OK, great.

So one thing too is, we want to make this interactive. And you know, as Jeff fires off some questions, I made these handsome little Fusion LEGO men. And if you can answer a question, you will win one. So just to let you guys know. I don't have enough for everybody in this room. There's a lot of people in this room. Just want to let you know, that we want to make this interactive. Answer away.

Jeff is going to go through a lot of just his experience. And on my side, work with the CAM team, I want to show you some of the new stuff that came out in Fusion Ultimate this past week, talking about a fourth axis wrapping, specifically.

And just to do a quick introduction. You know, we have another gentleman in the back room, Renee, who is a part of our Copenhagen development team. And he's here just to really listen on in, and if you guys have feedback, it's great to hear that. If there's things that I cannot do, he will do it for me.

But I think that at the end of the day, the value he brings is just hearing what you guys have to say about the product, please take advantage of him in this room today. All right?

JEFF HOOPER: Yeah, I hope I don't bore anybody. I mean everybody's at a different level. So when you're preparing something like this, you never know where everyone's at. But I do have a question here. For instance, I'm making this part. What's the problem-- if I'm going to run a production, what's the first thing that jumps out on you on this part that could be more efficient?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: Yeah.

CURT CHAN: The nonmachinist answer that, please?

JEFF HOOPER: Yeah, so I just went through and just selected them from left to right. And this is Fusion's. I'm going to do these contours like this. I don't care what you think, right? That's what it's going to do. So it kicked out this, but really, that's going to slow me down quite a bit. Because if you look at it, he's going to this guy first, and then he goes all the way to the end, and then he does that one, then he comes up and does the second one.

Now what sense does that make? But there's a way to fix it. And there's a way to make it make it more efficient. First, what I'm going to do is look at my tool path that happened before that. And if you notice, it starts and ends on the right side. So that's, I don't want my tool to come all the way back down to the other side of the part, right? I want to stay on that side.

So what I can do is edit, and what I'm going to use is the entry position. Now I don't have my fancy mouse, but if I just select-- now this is not on the geometry that I'm cutting. This is just in the general area. I don't have to actually select the sketch that I made.

Now that is a much better tool. The toll path doesn't even Z up. He goes right across. Let's see, I got a little MacBook Air. He's going to struggle with this. He's a few years old. No wasted time. No wasted movements.

Now he's going from right to left. So that's what I'm going to think of when I do the next one. It's almost the exact same contour, except it's doing the finish move. Let's see here. That's what I want. OK. So I'm going to start my entry positions, and I'm going to go the opposite way. So when my tool comes up, it doesn't go all the way to the other side of the part. It picks up right where it left off.

And then I do the same thing with the next tool. This one, he's all over the place. He's deburring the edge of the plastic part, everywhere that that tool pushed a burr off the side. So what I can do on this-- don't get sick on me, because I'm going to rotate this part around. So he starts there. And he starts there. And he enters there. So I'm keeping in mind that I'm climb cutting the entire time I'm selecting where I want it to start. Because that's what I've got selected for it to do.

So much more efficient tool path. You notice the tool even dodges and doesn't interfere with the part. I can do the same thing with the next operation and with the next operation. And so what I end up with is a very concise and quick tool path, where I've saved probably a minute just in rapiding back and forth, especially when I have multiple vices, multiple instances of this running at one time. And if I'm going to do 2,000 of these things, I could save an entire day by the end of the week, in just spending a little bit of time in detailing out exactly how it links from move to move.

Another thing, like what we mentioned before. This is the fixture we showed earlier. And this is what Fusion would make if it had an opportunity. Let me hide my sketches. A lot of linking moves. But by creating a trace, very concise tool path. And what's nice about Fusion, is it's a full CAD software.

For instance, on this next operation where I sawed these in half, I just went in and selected a plane on one and a plane on the other, and it selected the middle of that plane. And you can't do that in any Cam software. You can't find the middle of two surfaces. That's something that SolidWorks does or Inventor does. It's not something that MasterCam does or GibbsCam, those softwares. So leveraging that software on Fusion allows me to do more sophisticated planes and orientations and being able to sketch out my own tool paths without breaking associativity.

So that's some of the tips that I had on moving from prototyping to production. It might be a change in thinking. You know, being less manpower oriented and more-- we got to give that guy back there a LEGO man.

CURT CHAN: I will.

JEFF HOOPER: Who is that guy? Raise your hand. Who said--

CURT CHAN: All right.

JEFF HOOPER: You get a LEGO man, sir. All right, does anybody know what undercutting is when it comes to like lollipop cutters? Anybody doing any of that now?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: T-slot cutters.

CURT CHAN: Who said that? Same guy.

JEFF HOOPER: You can't get two LEGO men. You want too much. Here's one of the parts I have real quick. And for this part, I could either have a five axis, which I don't. Or I could buy a $100 lollipop cutter from Harvey, and be completely happy with that.

CURT CHAN: Really quick Jeff, would you mind just changing the appearance on it, just because it's a little bit darker on the screen, maybe go with like aluminium or--

JEFF HOOPER: This could take a minute on this machine here. I've got to hit A and wait. I don't have but four megs of RAM here. Yeah, I'm--

CURT CHAN: There you go. Is that better for you guys? A little cleaner.

JEFF HOOPER: But really, that's a testament to Fusion, right? I'm sitting here-- walked into a machine shop the other day. I needed to program some aerospace parts, and I walked in like a nerd, with my little MacBook Air. And I programmed all their machines and walked down because all the post processors were there.

There's only two operations that do undercutting, as far as I know. Rene, you can correct me? But you can do ramping, 3D ramping, and then you can do 3D contour. Both of those will handle undercutting.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: What will?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: Oh, will it?

CURT CHAN: Horizontal.

JEFF HOOPER: Is that new?

AUDIENCE: Nope.

JEFF HOOPER: Well, they didn't tell me about that when I asked. But it's nice having the man in here to tell-- and Horizontal by the way, if you have--

So one problem I had with manufacturing this part that was sculpted, and I'm running these things as a production part, so I'm very conscious about my tool path. So I have this lollipop cutter, and if you notice, he's going under on where those knuckles are, which I needed to be able to make this complete surface in one hit. And then flip him over. I'm just going to grab him in some soft jawls and run to the other side.

So I do this part that's sculpted in two operations. But I couldn't do it in two operations and have everything bland and be beautiful if I didn't have some ability to do some undercutting. And honestly, after all the softwares that I've used, from CATIA to MasterCam, Fusion and HMSWorks handles undercutting and all the linking moves way better and calculates it much, much faster.

So anyway, that's all I have to say. I think we've got two LEGO men out in the audience. And now we have Curtis. He's going to demo some of the new four-axis rotating.

CURT CHAN: Any questions so far. Yes, sir?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: How am I holding IT for the second op?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: Oh, I'm not doing the lettering. That's going to be laser cut in later, after it's assembled. Yeah, good catch though. Because I thought about that, I'm like, well, that's out. Yeah, but I've got to make money on these things. I can't be sitting around all day indexing these things around.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: We're going to talk about that later. But that would be exotic. That would be, it would be--

AUDIENCE: Sounds like you could. You could do it with the same trace. [INAUDIBLE].

CURT CHAN: It's traced, yep. Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF HOOPER: Well, whenever you're doing production work, it is worth it to add-- I mean, you're going to be doing a lot of G code editing. And so, I think that's the only way to be able to change in the middle of one pass. Rene is not paying attention, I must be right. For now.

CURT CHAN: Any other questions? You can jump back over, right, Jeff?

JEFF HOOPER: Yeah.

CURT CHAN: OK, cool. All right, so-- fourth axis. You know, this is-- with Fusion Ultimate, and you'll hear about this a lot more tomorrow during the keynote, is we introduced, or I call it, we brought Fusion Ultimate back out of retirement. Because it was around a couple of years ago. And we introduced a wrapping five-axis capabilities, well, it's probing.

And we've created some great technical content that's on our YouTube channel around a lot of those topics. But what I want to focus on is just the wrapping side of things. I hear a lot of that from people that have the fourth axis, a lot of Tormach users that have asked about that. Who here owns a CNC machine?

I know we've talked a little bit about-- so owning versus accessing is two different things. Who here has-- who here owns a Tormach, just out of curiosity. OK, so we have a couple people, great. Cool. Awesome.

So this part, I'm just using a generic part straight from our Cam sample. A lot of people didn't even know we have a Cam sample's file or folder. So what you want to do is, under the data panel, you're going to drop all the way down and under, the very bottom, you can see you're going to have Cam samples. And in here, we've actually added a Work Holding.

So if you actually own an orange vice or Kurt vice or Chick or one of those, we actually have added all those different vices in here. A Fifth axis and so forth. And then, too, we have these great examples here. And the one I'm opening up is the Millturn one.

And the reason why I want to show you this is, one, it's just a very simple, straightforward example of how we can do fourth axis here in working with wrap. So the first thing is, you only can work with cylindrical features here, not conical or cones or anything along that way today. It's only cylindrical faces.

So I always tell people that the biggest step in getting something set up is always the set up. You spend probably 90% of your time there, and as you saw with Jeff, everything else is just going through quick and easy tool paths. And we talk about set up. There are some tricks that I've learned over the years that have really worked for me, and hopefully, you know, you guys learned something new today in regard to just setting up your part.

So when you set this up, you know, when you work with your work coordinate system, you always can flip the different arrows for different directions. But since I don't have a planar face, you see how I have my origins turned on? As well as I've created an additional offset plane to use as a reference. I can leverage those as different references to offset and change my work coordinate system.

So for set up, in this example, I'm going to come off a cylindrical piece of stock. And I'm sure a lot of you guys have had a problem like this. So if I go ahead and drop then and pick a relative size cylinder, and I know my z needs to be facing where? Up. Right?

So if I come in, and I start flipping around here, right? Fantastic. And I'm going to grab and hit the stem of the arrow. And if I pick a planar face, you guys seen this happen? You know, but wait a second. But the tools, correct. But the orientation of my stock is wrong. So the best fix, because if I come in now, I can actually start flipping around the x, which is what I want. Because that's the a axis, right? But my stock is still wrong.

This is the biggest tip because a lot of people just bully through this in regards to-- yeah, this is just like certain things, put in your parameters. Well, under stock, you have something called access. And what access does is if you actually activate that, and you click on the cylindrical face you want that access to go down.

Now your stock is always going to be in that direction. And you can flip your work coordinate system, and it's never going to change that axial direction of your stock. Does that makes sense? Cool. Someone learn something? Cool, Awesome LEGO men for those people over there. They learned something.

So from this area, you always want-- from a location of where you want your work coordinate system to be. Under box point, you're going to always throw it right down the middle of this guy. OK? Very straightforward.

Now from here. I'm not going to go in and set up everything. I only want to concentrate just on the wrapping section of this. So one is you look at some of the geometry. And the reason why I'm using this part is so you guys can use this part too and explain this to people. And evangelize for me, because I'm an evangelist. I need more guys like you talking about it.

But you look at this slot versus this slot. And can anybody tell really the difference between the two? Like if you just looked at it and you went to go program it, you would just think it's a slot. Yes? The guy that has already three LEGO men.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

CURT CHAN: Yeah, correct. Correct. So one is actually a flat face. So we're only going to concentrate on the one that has that curvature to it. So to access fourth-axis wrapping is, number one, under 2D contour I'm going to drop in and do just a-- under 2D, I'm going to drop in a 2D contour.

And under Geometry, for the contour that I want, I'm going to select that edge. But it's not what I want because it's normal to the z. So we have to turn on wrap tool path. OK? Now that will give us the correct orientation we want, but this is the trick. You guys are going to learn something new, someone else too. Is that today be careful where you select for the face. And I'm going to show you exactly why this is very important.

Because either a, you're not going to get the part you want to cut. And then b, it's just wrong in general. So what we're going to do is, if I say, well, I just want a cylindrical face to reference, right? If I just select that face because it's cylindrical face, fantastic. Say OK. Whoops. Let's-- what should we do for-- let's go grab the right tool Let's go with this guy.

It looks great, right? So if we run and simulate this part right here, from the naked eye, say play. See what it's doing? Can you see that? Let me just slow this down a little bit. All right. Hold up. This guy right there. Look at that. Why is it doing that?

Yeah, because it's picking-- I picked a different reference face, right? I picked that outer edge. So if I come in, and if you don't know the hot key, if I just click this tool path, you command D on a Mac or control D. It will duplicate that tool path, right click, edit. And instead of picking that just random cylindrical face, I'm going to uncheck this and pick the cylindrical face that I really want it to look at. But in mental note, you're just like, I just want a cylindrical face. Say, OK.

Now if I simulate it, it's now giving me the correct tool path. So I want you guys to understand one, is that picking the axis on a work coordinate system, it's very important to get that orientation when you're working with fourth axis, right? You're going to realize that once you start working with this.

And then two, the face you select is really key in regards to what you want to machine. So last thing before I hand it back over to Jeff, is I want to talk about adaptive clearing and how we actually can adaptive clear an open pocket. Because today we can't, trust me. But there's a really quick way of doing this.

And it not only shows just how easy it is and how powerful Cam is, but how powerful Fusion is in general. I'm not trying to pitch it to you. I'm just being really realistic here. How easy this is. So if I actually opened up a pocket or made a pocket, right? Let me hop back from Cam coming here to model. I'm going to select this fill it and this fill it, and just say delete. And get rid of those fill its. Takes a little bit time. And then now, just select this face, do right click, press, pull. And just drag this guy right out, hit enter, and now I have an open pocket, OK?

So just to save time, I'm not going to go ahead and try to program that because it's not going to cut the open side of it. I'm going to have to figure some other way. So a trick that I do to adapt [INAUDIBLE] for wrap, is this. If I actually come on over here, under model, come down now to Patch. And if I select this face under Create, I can do offset, and I can do zero offset. So just basically offset that surface.

So if I turn off this body right here, I just have that surface. And come down under Extend, grab this edge, and drag it out, OK? So I'm extending the surface. Turn back on body, just come right back over here to Cam, OK? Now we can actually leverage this as my contour to use for 2D adaptive clearing. Because it's outside of it.

So if I come on over here now under 2D, 2D adaptive clearing, I'm going to pick this outside edge, right? Turn on wrap. Pick, of course, that surface that I want. And then too, if I say OK-- we make sure we got the right tool here-- I get this. Anyone ever get one of these guys before? And you right click. And you come on down. And you say Show log. And it tells you, Empty tool path. And you have no idea what that means, right?

So one, we are working on many ways of clarifying this. And that's why Rene is here, you know, to see all these things. And this is the troubleshooting ways I take in figuring out this. And the first thing that comes to mind is I go to my linking tab. So if you hop on down and edit this guy, under linking, and you scroll on down to-- I'm going to first change it to plunge. Actually no, no let's do helix.

So if I change this helical ramp diameter, that-- if this is larger, if that plus the diameter of your tool is larger than your slot, it ain't going to work. That's just the first thing I already know off the bat. So what I'm going to do is just change this value as I go down to 5 thou, and say, OK. Now I'm going to get-- now I've fixed the linking, and now I'm going to actually get the correct tool path that I'm looking for. And on top of that too, you can see it's helix and on down. And I can change all my heights.

So one thing just to show you for simulation purposes, if I go in and edit, and then come back over here to linking, drop down, go to plunge, say OK. So it's going to plunge down if I right click, say simulate, I am now going to get that adaptor point on the outside. And of course, I extended that surface a little too far out, right? But now I am 2D adaptiving a open pocket to rough out that material, right?

So this a trick that I always love to use in surfaces to then leverage for my Cam tool path. Yes, sir?