All About CAM: Autodesk Fusion 360 Manufacturing Highlights

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Experience the best of Autodesk Fusion 360 manufacturing with these CAM tools, from corner finishing to automatic deburr.

From day one, we’ve committed to delivering power, flexibility, and unparalleled performance to all, and we’ve come a long way—particularly in the manufacturing space. If you haven’t looked at Fusion 360 lately, here are some manufacturing highlights you won’t want to miss. Make sure to take a look at each of these tools designed to further streamline your workflows and help you get products to market faster.

Geometry Features

Geometry and stock contours is a powerful tool that lets you use different types and combinations of selections including chains, face contours, pockets, sketch profiles, and silhouettes for more flexibility. You can also reuse geometry from a previous toolpath by selecting it from the browser and applying it to another. This creates an associative link automating the process of updating toolpaths if a design change were to occur.

Turning – Profile Finishing Holder Collision Checking

When profile finishing with general tools there is now an option to machine undercuts. Previously these tools would only be able to enter the undercut area at the same angle as the trailing edge of the insert. This option allows for the area to be machined. For safety, you can define a clearance value for either the back of the insert or holder.

Corner Finishing

This toolpath brings together some of the best corner finishing technology from Autodesk PowerMill. This single-rest finishing toolpath produces better results and allows for more automation of toolpath strategies on complex feature-rich parts.

This strategy holds a number of advantages over native pencil machining. These include the utilization of larger reference tools, to define rest machining regions, and options to vary the strategy depending on whether the corners are steep or shallow to improve cutting conditions, with support for multi-axis machining and collision avoidance, to produce safe and efficient toolpaths.

Automatic Deburr

This intelligent toolpath automatically removes the small burrs that are often left on the edges of parts after machining. Deburr works by identifying sharp edges, or small radii, on parts. It then produces toolpaths to remove a small amount of material from edges using 3-, 4-, or 5-axis machine motion. This removes the reliance on manual deburring, resulting in less frustration, increased throughput, and an improvement in part quality.

Rotary Enhancements

Rotary Pocket is a roughing strategy that allows you to remove material from cylindrical, conical, and freeform parts rotating around a 4^th-axis. This allows you to tackle more complex geometry when compared to 4-axis wrap.

Complimenting the Rotary Pocket strategy is the Rotary Contour strategy. This is a 4-axis simultaneous strategy designed to finish machine the sidewalls of features that radiate from the central axis of a part. Both Rotary Pocket and Rotary Contour strategies
support flat-end mills, ball noses, and bull-nosed tool types.

They also have a range of options to control the toolpath. These include boundary limits, ordering options, rest machining, and automatic shaft and holder clearance checking. These options help improve cutting conditions to prolong tool life and help minimize overall machining cycle time.

Rotary Pocket and Rotary Contour, alongside the existing Rotary toolpath, provide a more efficient solution for the machining of 4-axis parts.

Inclined Flat Machining

Flat machining includes intelligence to give you a multitude of automatically calculated 3+2 toolpaths for all inclined planes while the connection moves are all simultaneous 5-axis. Inclined Flats detect the maximum and minimum tilt angle range defined by you, references either the setup z-axis or the tool orientation for the angles defined, and finds all the flats within that range and cuts them. This is a fantastic addition to the Flat strategy, which automates the toolpath to machine all the flats on your parts, inclined or not.

Learn more and try Fusion 360

Unlock the full range of possibilities today with Fusion 360. Check out the other articles in this series to explore all that Fusion 360 has to offer:

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All About CAM: Autodesk Fusion 360 Manufacturing Highlights You Don’t Want to Miss