Pierce on a point?

[tchap]

What is the trick to pierce on a point to create the smallest possible hole ? If I create points in the cad can sheet am just move to the point, pierce it at some duration and use a drill to make it the correct size.

[Knick]

I believe if you do search for this you will find that sheet cam has a setting for that exact thing

[ChelanJim]

It is often referred to as pecking but BrownFox explains it very well here:

“Pecking” the center of holes on a complex design without cutting other inner geometry. Need a real Fusion 360 wizard!

Sheetcam does this with the drilling operation. Any circle set with the drilling operation will just get pecked in the center.

[tchap]

I found some videos on YouTube I’ll give it a try

[TomWS]

The complete SheetCam setup can be found here:

Minimum hole size in 1/8" aluminum?

I think @Agent86 reference above is a good one and might give you what you need. For my part, I don’t try to cut accurate holes below 5/8", mainly because I don’t have to. In your case, where you’re in production, maybe it’s necessary. In my case, however, what I want is accurately positioned holes and, to do that, I simply burn a mark in the plate using the same CNC system as the rest of the piece. To burn a mark I do all ‘holes’ first and I do these with a 20A nozzle, run the cutter at 15 …

[toolboy]

the pecking feature is great once you get the hang of it…
I used it to build my HouseMade 2x72 belt grinder from @HouseWork …
this guy knows how to design and build grinders…

[apynckel]

Can this be done in Fusion as well? Often wondered. Are the holes then drillable with a HSS drill, or too hard to drill with the slag/dross/oxides?

[toolboy]

remember the peck process is not a hole…it is a little tiny divot a little bigger than a punch set on a metal surface…
drilling it is the same as when drilling a punch mark…there is no difference in drilling

[ChelanJim]

@apynckel

Can this be done in Fusion as well?

There are several predominant ways but they are all work-arounds.

You can run a separate post processor that only pierces the holes:

Custom version of Fusion 360 post processor to enable "pierce only in the center" for holes

I have made this post processor if you are interested in having Fusion just pierce the center of (some) holes so that they can be driller/reamed manually. This version is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE It installs like the regular one from Langmuir but it’s marked 1.7 just to differentiate it. [image] In order to use it, create a cut operation and name it “pier…

Or you can set all of your holes basically to the size of your kerf width (+0.01), run a separate tool path selecting all of the holes and turn your amperage down on the cutter to peck or leave the amperage up to pierce. In this tool path use center compensation, and with NO lead-in/lead-out/finishing overlap/pierce clearance. (Note: You can alter your tolerance so you can use your actual kerf width as the hole size.)

[tchap]

I have it working well. Thanks for the tips. I use sheet cam and highly recommend it. I use fusion daily for some things but I like SC for generating gcode from dxf.