I’ve owned my Shapeoko for over 2 years but never cut anything 3D, only prismatic parts.
Is there a really simple 3D file that I can start with? One that could be run from CC Pro?
Hey @jay443,
This thread may be of interest ?
To kickstart your 3D adventures you could pick one of the ideas there, and try to reproduce it ?
The important thing is to understand the workflow (which is relatively simple). After that, cutting a very simple 3D shape or an arbitrarily complex one are not very different, because CC Pro does all the work, when you tell it to generate a 3D roughing toolpath, and then a 3D finishing toolpath.
Pick an idea of something you would like to do, and if after watching those tutorials you don’t know where to start, report here with your idea and we’ll help.
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Cool thanks.
What kind of endmills will I need to buy?
For fine 3D carving… look for tapered ball nose end mills… Amazon has some affordable ones with a 1mm ball and a 5 degree taper
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I’m with @fenrus, a tapered ballnose is great for 3D finishing. The only catch is that CC does not support tapered endmills, but for 99% of 3D jobs you can just lie to CC and pretend that you will be using a straight ballnose, of the same diameter as the tapered endmill tip radius, it will work just fine.
If you happen to have a 1/8’’ ballnose, you could use that too.
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Tapered endmills are awesome to get really fine detail, but a 1/4" or 1/8" bit is great to start with, they are good because though you do get less detail, you can experiment a bit and aren’t there waiting for hours for each job to finish
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