Design your own cutting board
You'll personalize a real cutting board and make the program that tells our Tormach 24R CNC router how to cut it. Your teacher has already chosen the tools, speeds, and depths.
All fields are required.
Board shape
Every part starts with its outside shape, called the profile. Choose how round the board's corners are. Then set up the juice groove: how far it sits from the edges and your design area, how deep it is, how round its corners are, and what it does on the side by your design area.
Make it yours
Add your name, a year, or a picture. Everything has to stay inside the dashed box.
Plan the cuts
In CAM you plan how the machine will cut your design. Work through the three parts below, one at a time.
Each cut uses a different tool. The shape of the tool's tip decides the shape it leaves in the plastic.
Your board needs 3 cuts. Each cut uses a different tool, and the machine does them from top to bottom in this list. Use ▲ ▼ to move a cut. Point at a cut to see it on the machine view.
Think about it: one of these cuts sets your board free from the extra plastic. After that cut, only tape holds the board down.
Finish job 1 first.
The machine measures every move from one point called X0 Y0 (the work offset, G54). For this project, we set X0 Y0 at the front-right corner of the stock. Other jobs may use a different corner or the center of the part; the programmer picks it and the setup sheet says where.
The front of the machine, where you stand, is the bottom of the picture. Click the front-right corner of the stock.
is the board turned sideways?
Finish job 2 first.
Test it on screen
Watch the router cut your board. Look for anything that seems wrong before we cut real plastic. Pros always simulate first.
These are predictions, not a test. You will check them after you watch.
1. For this project, Z0 is the top of the plastic. When the tool is up in the air above the plastic, will its Z number be positive or negative? (You will check the Z number in the tool position box at the top right.)
2. What will the V-bit do when it moves from one engraved line to the next?
1. You predicted . Look at the Z number in the tool position box (top right) while the tool is in the air. Would you keep or change your answer? Choose one, then write why.
2. What did the tool do between separate engraved lines, and why?
does the Tormach 24R move?
The 24R is a gantry router. The gantry (the bridge over the table) rolls left and right along the table: that's the Y axis. The spindle slides along the gantry, toward and away from you: that's X. The spindle moves up and down: that's Z. Watch the gantry in the 3D view.
does the tool change work?
does the tool lift between letters?
does the profile go around more than once?
Read the G-code
The CAM plan gets posted into G-code, the line-by-line language the router reads. You don't have to write it, but a machinist should be able to read it. Click any line to see what it means.
Find each line in the code, then click it.
Click any line in the code. If it is a move, press Show this move to watch the tool and see which number changes.
This is a short demo, not your program. A programmer forgot something between the two letters. Press Play and watch.
Where is the unwanted mark, and how would you fix the G-code?