Speaker 1: Hi and welcome my
name's Tom and today we'll be
looking at how to get started
with SOLIDWORKS CAM. SOLIDWORKS
CAM is kept directly with inside
SOLIDWORKS and you can see we
have an added tree and toolbar
to help us do CAM upon our CAD
models. For the toolbar you can
see, we have buttons from left
to right, and the workflow is
very much working from left to
right from definement machine to
post-processing at the bottom in
the tree we have what's called
the CAM feature tree. This is
where SOLIDWORKS CAM will
recognize features from your
model at an apply a tool path to
them. We have the operations
tree to see what those
operations would be. And
finally, we have a tool tree as
well. Is this for any tools that
we are using to machine the
parts. So let us get started.
The first place we want to go is
a SOLIDWORKS CAM toolbar and hit
define machine, defined machine
and let's just pick the
kinematics of our machine. The
tools used and the post
processor to get the code from
the tool paths we added in
SOLIDWORKS CAM. So you can see
to start off with I've picked
mill metric. If the units inside
SOLIDWORKS where inch, this
would turn to Imperial. Next, I
can go and get a tool crib by
default. There's a tool crib
pre-made for you in tool crib 2
but you've also got tool
crib 1 which is empty. And in
here we can build up the tool
crib as we want. So by clicking
add tool, you can see it adds
the tool select to filter, or we
can now go pick any tools we
want. These are predefined
within side SOLIDWORKS CAM so
you don't have to keep going and
making your own. Well, you can
do that if you wish I'm going to
start off with an eight mm, two
flute, flat end, end mill if I
click okay on that one, it'll
pick me a generic holder for
this, and this can be changed
also as well. If need be. I can
also go in here and pick myself
some smaller tools. So I might
want to pick a four mm I can
click okay on that one. And that
brings through as well. And if I
want to get something, that's
not an end mill, like a drill,
for instance, I can pick drill
and I can go and grab whatever
drill I wish in this case, I
might get a 10 mm drill because
I have one of those and you can
see, this is really quick and
easy to start building up a tool
library. We can also go and get
other variations, such as ball,
nose, and hognose ball nose
mills. We'll go and hop as we
can describe a ball on the
bottom. And I might want to get,
let's say a six mill ball nose,
and
a hog nose, a similar, but not
quite the same. You can see a
hog nose cutter would have a
radius on the edge. What's a
flat bottom as well. That's
going be seen here. So really
good for roughing out. So if I
pick one of those as well, I
could save that tool crib. And
then that would get me exactly
what I want. I could give this
name as well. So I could call
this Tom's tool crib. This could
be your company name or whatever
you wish you want it to be
called. If I click save on that,
you can see now at the bottom I
have Tom's tool crib and by
double clicking I can select
that for use. From there I can
simply go and click OK If I want
or pick the post processor that
I want to use, this time I'm
going to go and get an
three-axis tutorial. So from
here, we're ready to start going
and setting up our coordinate
system and stock. The next piece
that we might define is the
coordinate system. If I go and
click coordinate system, you can
see by default is put it down at
the bottom of the parts. That
may not be exactly what I want
it to be. We could go and pick a
SOLIDWORKS coordinate system. If
we had one, we could go and pick
one of the vertexs of the parts,
bounding box or as we want it
to be on the stock vertex and
you can see it's defaulted to
the top center. Now, any of
these white dots we could pick
and it will move coordinate
system or your G54 to that
position. But for now, the
center is exactly where I want
it, So by pressing tick on that
and goes and captures that
information for us straight
away, from there you can go and
get stock manager. The stock
manager is really powerful. We
could, first of all, assign the
material, want to cut if it's
not being done inside SOLIDWORKS
and I want to get 60, 61
aluminium. From here, we can go
and simply add a bounding box
round the outside. And you can
see this being done by adding
5mm to the sides. And I can add
3mm on the top and 10mm to the
bottom. If we didn't want to do
that, we could go and pick a
sketch. We could pick a
predefined billet signs we've
got, a rotational sketch or an
STL, or even a configuration or
a different part file
altogether, which is really
handy if you do something like a
casting, but for now, that's got
everything that I might want. So
I can go and press the tick. As
you can see, we've got a nice
pop up to tell us that the
coordinate systems being moved
because the stock has been
modified. By clicking yes on
that goes and confirms that
update for us. From
here this is got us exactly
where we need to be to start
machining. In the next video
we'll look at how we can go and
automatically assign tool paths
using the data and the
technology database, as well as
adding manual ones, if that's
needed as well. So hope you've
enjoyed this first part of
getting started with SOLIDWORKS
CAM. Thank you for watching.