Book Image

Making Your CAM Journey Easier with Fusion 360

By : Fabrizio Cimò
Book Image

Making Your CAM Journey Easier with Fusion 360

By: Fabrizio Cimò

Overview of this book

Downloading a piece of 3D software and shaping concepts and ideas is quite easy. However, designing feasible and cost-effective real parts from 3D models can be challenging with traditional production technologies, or even additive manufacturing. This book will give you the know-how and skills to develop your projects from ideas to physical products, and overcome these obstacles. In ‘Making Your CAM Journey Easier with Fusion 360’, you'll discover how to set up a CAM program, pick the right tool, and optimize production. You'll learn the pros and cons of different production technologies, including turning, milling, laser cutting, and 3D printing, and understand how to choose the best option based on your needs. You’ll also explore the important computer-aided manufacturing tools that Fusion 360 offers through the use of examples and best practices. By the end of this book, you’ll understand the potential issues and drawbacks of different design components and apply workarounds to avoid design flaws.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Implementing Turning Operations in Fusion 360
7
Part 2 – Milling with Fusion 360
13
Part 3 – Laser Cutting Using Fusion 360
17
Part 4 – Using Fusion 360 for Additive Manufacturing
22
Part 5 – Testing Our Knowledge

Printing overhang geometries

Overhang areas are sloped faces that protrude beyond the base of our model. We actually already faced a similar concept, undercuts, when studying milling issues:

Figure 15.1: Undercuts for milling

Figure 15.1: Undercuts for milling

As we may recall, undercuts are geometries that cannot be reached by the cutting tool, they are a huge limitation to milling processes even if we already found several possible solutions to fix undercuts in Chapter 7.

In this section, we will focus on additive manufacturing to find out whether undercuts are an issue that affects FDM printing as well, and if so, how.

Facing overhangs (undercuts) in 3D printing

Before jumping to the answer, let’s get back to basics – additive manufacturing, instead of removing material from a solid block, creates a shape by stacking multiple layers one on top of the other.

For this reason, generally speaking, 3D printers don’t suffer undercut-related issues nearly as...