2D Milling Workflow

Voxelizer allows you to easily generate 2D and 3D paths for your CNC machine. In this tutorial we will see how the 2D milling workflow works.

First of all, make sure that you are working inside the 2D milling workflow.

In the Scene editor, under the Material tab,  you can first of all set the dimensions and position of your chunk of material:

By selecting File → Import → Dxf you can import the file or files that you want mill. In the DXF arrangement tab you can apply basic transformations (move, scale and rotate) to your drawings as well as grouping and ungrouping paths.

The Drawing tool tab offers you the possibility to add simple shapes and text to your drawing.

Once you click next you are in the Settings Editor. Here you will set up the milling commands to send to your machine. Before looking at the main Milling Settings tab, let’s check Tool settings and Material settings.

• Tool settings

Here you can set the specifics of the milling tools that you have, starting by selecting the tooltip shape between cylindrical, spherical and v-shape.

• Material settings

         Set here the specifics of the material that you are going to mill.

MILLING SETTINGS

The Milling settings tab is where you provide the operations for the machine. There are 4 distinct sub-tabs.

• Basic settings

         In Basic settings you provide the material that will be used and the Safe height of travel.

• New operation

Here you can apply one or more operations to your paths, for each one specifying settings and tool used.  At the moment you should generate one g-code per tool used, hence you cannot have multiple operations that used different tools because then during the process of milling the machine would not stop automatically to allow you to change the tool. For the specifics about each operation see our dedicated article "2D Milling Operations"(comming soon).

In the example below we are applying a contour operation that will mill all the way through the material, leaving the circles empty and then an engrave operation for the text.

• Operation order list

Here you can change the order of your operations, as well as look at their details and delete them. Once an operation is selected you have a preview in the 3D view of the path that the tool will follow.

• Simulation

In the last tab you can engage a voxel simulation on your material and get a realistic view of how your artifact will look at the end of all the operations.

In the example below we can see that two circles will not be milled due to imperfections in the dxf file: we might want to go to fix this issue in our CAD software.

Once you are happy with your simulation, you can click Next and generate the g-code to send to your machine.