In addition to Balls nose end mills / Flat end mills, it’s recommended to include the following tools in your toolset.
It’s worth remembering that CAM Assist uses the name of your cutting data presets to understand which tools can be used for different scenarios.
The reader should be familiar with the naming standard for formatting cutting data presets names (see Naming Cutting Data Presets).
Ball end mills
For Ball end mills, it’s recommended to use around 5 tools in your toolset, with a range of diameters, and a usable length ('Shoulder length') of around 5xD. Of course, you can choose whichever tools make sense for the work you see most often.
Simply create or rename one preset for each ball end mill as follows:
“Aluminum - Finishing”
Drills
Drills are another important tool to have set up correctly for CAM Assist to work best. If you do not have a full set of drills, then when CAM Assist encounters a hole, it will generate a lot of inefficient helical milling toolpaths, which may not be what you want.
For best results, ensure that your toolset contains drills for all of the common sizes of hole that you see in your shop. Then, create or rename one preset for each tool as follows:
“Aluminum - Drilling”
Pro Tip
In case you want to postpone this step for later, you can copy all the drills from the 'CAM Assist Sample Tools. Then, simply replace them with your own tools as and when you need them.
Spot drills
Spot drills are used by CAM Assist to create small chamfers around the edges of holes after drilling, with a single Z-axis movement. The chamfer may be present in the model, or not.
Spot drills may be used by CAM Assist for the ‘spot drilling’ operation. CAM Assist assumes that if you are using only high quality, self centering carbide drills, you will not need ‘spot drilling’ in most scenarios.
It’s recommended to add 1 or 2 spot drills to your toolset (large and small) with a 90 degree tip angle. Then, create or rename one preset for each tool as follows:
“Aluminum - Drilling”
Engrave/chamfer mills
Chamfer tools are used to create chamfers, using X/Y moves unlike the spot drill which uses Z moves only. Much like spot drills, it’s recommended to add 1 or 2 chamfer tools. Then create or rename one preset for each as follows:
“Aluminum - Chamfer”
If you choose not to add any chamfer tools, CAM Assist will use a suitable ball nose tool to contour mill any chamfers, so long as one exists in your toolset.
Next step
At this point, you’ll have End mills and a selection of other recommended tools in your toolset.
Face mills are optional as CAM Assist will work without them (you simply won’t get facing toolpaths at the beginning of your program). For information on how to use them, see Face Mills.
If you want to skip Face mills for now, take a look at the Using CAM Assist section, which explains the layout of the CAM Assist UI and details each of its features.