Simple hold-down toolpath

I’ve been spending a lot of time using Mozaik at work, and they have a neat feature that simplifies anchoring work when you don’t have enough clamping on the bed. After you build a file for cutting, you can choose open spots on your layout and designate them as a spot for a screw. The program tells the cnc to peck a small divot at each spot, and saves the toolpath as it’s own file so that the spindle returns home after running. Once the pecking is done, you take a countersink bit, drill out the pecks, then sink a screw through the work into the table, confident that the router bits won’t hit that screw while running the real job. It would be easy enough to manually setup a drill program to peck around a work piece, but having it slightly automated might make people use it more. Hope someone finds this interesting.

I do this manually when I am nervous that blue tape and superglue is not enough. I have learned that red oak ( even 7 yr old ) still has some shrinking to do after you mill it.
I had a piece that lifted off the table surface.

I don’t think this is an automation effort without a lot of configuration. I had to plan out where the 4.04" T-track landed on the part.

Depending on how much z-height clearance you have, a spoil board clamped to the table will work to screw into.

You are correct. I have not done that as yet.

This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.