I got to play around making a hitch cover for a K9 officer friend of mine tonight so I figured I’d try cutting the 5/8 hole on the table. I took a slat out of the water table and it fit perfect. I drew a .65 hole in fusion and set the XY marker for the toolpath in the center of the hole. I marked out where I wanted the hole and centered it under the torch. Worked pretty well. All I needed was a quick zip around with the die grinder to knock out any burs. It’s a pretty quick way to cut holes, but I think I would want to rig up some type of jig to index the same way every time. Any one else mess around with this?
That is pretty cool. Nice work around. Had no idea we could put the xy marker anywhere. Nice job.
I think something like this where the bolt goes all the way through it’s better to use a drill press so you know it lines up perfect. But if I had a hole pattern to put in the side of a tube, this would be pretty cool. Just gotta take some time squaring it up with the gantry. I did a job the other day and had to outsource some 2.25" holes for a bale spear to the local shop. I wanted to try it on the table but it was down with a bad relay. At least I know it’ll work now.
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Just set up a positive stop somehow on the table, like with a square that you could clamp to a slat or something, may have to make it… Something like this…
then you have a positive stop… When I line up stuff that has to be pretty precision, I stick a tiny drill bit in the hole of the nozzle, one that just fits. Then it’s easy to line up perfectly with layout lines or a prick punch or whatever… I’ve also used that method to recover from a machine failure or if the sheet moved while cutting because I hit a tip up or something… Just find the xy point in the CAD, take a picture of the coords with my phone, move to that point on my cut, eyeball it, and then enter them in the DRO. I ALWAYS line the edge of my material with the slat furthest away from the Y rail. edge to edge… Easy to recover that way…
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