CAD/CAM Bottle Opener For The Syil x5 CNC Mill

00:23 - First, an explanation. When I say CNC machine what I mean in this case is a computer controlled milling machine. CNC is an old term for Computer Numerical Control, which made sense when only a few tools in a shop were controlled by computer. But now my 3D printer and my lasercutter are also controlled by computer, if I had a lathe it would be CNC, so the term makes less sense now. These days when most people say a CNC machine, they probably mean a CNC milling machine or a router.

CNC is subtractive- it takes material away, 3D printing is additive. It adds material. Otherwise they’re pretty similar, just a robot gantry that you send XYZ movement coordinates to, only one robot has a squirty thing and one robot has a spinny thing.

01:16 - The easiest way to think about CNC is it’s a blind, stupid, carving robot. You can have it carve whatever you want. But it can’t see, so you have to tell it exactly where the object you want carved is, you have to tell it what the material is made of, and you have to tell it what kind of carving tool it’s holding. A 3D printer on the other hand, its basically just “squirt hot plastic here” and that’s it.

01:44 - So our first step today is CAD, we’re going to tell our Syil X5 Pro CNC machine what shape we want carved.

01:52 - Then we’re going to bring that shape over to CAM, and in CAM we’re going to say what kind of material it is, how to carve it, and what kind of tool will be doing the carving.

02:03 - That will give us tool paths and speeds- basically just a string of numbers for the Syil X5 Pro to read off a USB stick.

02:12 - Today I’ll be using Fusion 360 for both the CAD and CAM, it’s not my favorite software.

02:18 - I don’t like cloud-based software tools at all so I rarely use it, that’s why I’m a little clumsy with it. In the future we’ll have a look at other CAD/CAM tools you can own and run offline on your own computer.

02:33 - I learned how to do all this from Aaron Powter of the Design Creativity & Technology Channel on YouTube. Aaron has the patience of a saint, he teaches shop class to high school students in Australia and I just have to say those students are really lucky.

02:51 - It took me months to learn this, I really struggled at times- and Aaron sent custom videos and walked me through the whole thing and I’m so grateful to him for his time and expertise.

03:03 - Any mistakes in these videos are mine, trust me he showed me how to do it right, I just tend to forget.

03:10 - Ok here we go! Okay, today we are going to use Fusion 360 to create an NC file for this simple bottle opener.

03:20 - Okay, let’s create a sketch. Let’s select the bottom plane and create the 2 point rectangle.

03:40 - And then we are going to extrude it, raise it up to 12 mm.

03:49 - Okay this is the general box for you to know the position of our simple bottle opener.

03:57 - Now I am going to import it. And you see this dialogue box, you go down to scale plane XY, we are going to change it from 1 to 1. 06 and let’s adjust it.

05:29 - Okay, now is done. So here we got the model and we are going to change from modeling to manufacture.

05:40 - So my friend Aaron is also a Youtuber and he teaches high school students how to use CNC machines. I am a beginner so I am probably worse than his student, my still. But he is very good at this. He shared his CAMPosts file with me, Syil LNCv2 and he shared his tool files with me because we both use the same brand of CNC machine, we use Syil’s but different models. His is X7, mine is X5.

06:14 - Anyway, let’s get to business. Let’s go to setup. New setup, now we see this stock, we are going to put the coordinate in the center. You can put it at the corner but I am just going to leave it at the center.

06:29 - Next we are going to change the stock bottom offset to 4mm, going to leave some space down there and WCS offset 1 because it’s default setting is G54 and 2 is G55 and so on. So we are going to click ok and then we are going to go to 2D face. As I said my friend has shared his tool library with me, so I am just going to use the 6mm end mill tool because that’s what I got from Taobao. Next we are going to passes for the first layer, I think the pass extension is around 6 to 10.

So we are going to make it 6mm. Okay, let’s simulate that.

07:43 - You see, the line is going out of range but not too far from it and this is what I want.

07:52 - Okay next is the cylinder. You see, if you want to drill a hole in Fusion 360. You are going to bore that out.

08:01 - The tool is already selected. It automatically select the same tool for me and because I don’t have a tool changer so I am going to use the same tool for this.

08:12 - Pitch is how deep it cuts everytime. So I am going to change it to 0. 75mm. Direction climb, yes.

08:26 - Okay. Alright, let’s simulate that.

08:37 - You can simulate the whole process but I think it’s too time-consuming and you will get bored looking at it. You can actually simulate it from the beginning.

08:47 - Next, we are going to clear up the extra meat around the bottle opener. We are going to 2D adaptive clearing and we are going to  select the bottom.

09:10 - Optimal load I am going to change it to 1. 5mm, it’s 25% of the diameter and stock to leave 0mm.

09:28 - Okay, let’s simulate that. You see the yellow line there? I am going to clear it a bit.

10:12 - Okay, next I am going to 2D contour. Okay, let’s simulate that again.

10:48 - Fewer of the yellow lines now, right? Okay, let’s generate that.

10:53 - Let’s click post-process first and you see I choose the Syil CNC-LNC file.

11:03 - I need to change the name to 1003. Ok, save it to the desktop.

11:21 - Ok, we have our NC file on our USB stick. That file says what shape we want carved, and how. Next video I’m going to put this in my Syil X5 Pro CNC machine and tell it where the object I want carved is- that’s a little more tricky than it sounds but I’ll show you how I do it. And remember, if I can do it, anyone can do it. .