Longmill toolpath simulation in F360

My Longmill Mk2 should be here tomorrow. Super excited to get it built and get to making some awesome stuff.

Been 3d printing for a few years, so already fairly familiar (i.e. beginner) with F360 CAD side of things. Spent the weekend going through some online tutorials and playing around to try and figure out the CAM side. Some similarities in concept with 3d Printing, but mostly completely different.

Couldn’t find any info on setting up the Longmill Mk2 in F360 other than basic settings applied to a generic pre-loaded 3-axis machine in Autodesk’s online library. Played around enough and figured out how to set it up with the opensource CAD drawings of the MK1 that Sience offers. Not the Mk2, but still very cool nonetheless. In the end I’ll probably prefer to see the tool only during simulation, but still thought it was cool to get it figured out, and gave me something to work on while waiting on the Mk2 to arrive.

Youtube link to the video is below. It took a ton of trial and error getting it to work, so not sure how well I’d be able to help someone else if they were interested in doing the same, but I’m always down to try.

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@smittycm Welcome to the group, Chris. Cool video. There are several Mill owners on here who use Fusion360, so you will likely find some good sources for info as you progress.

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Hopefully you’ll be satisfied with the mk2…however too many aren’t.

Thanks, yes, been very happy with it so far. No issues with the machine itself. Build and setup was very straightforward, and machine seems very solid. I think I need to tram it a little bit in the x axis because I’m getting some ridges on bottom of some pockets, but may also just be me needing to get better at settings such as adding a finishing pass. Any significant issues so far have been my own fault as I learn how to create the correct toolpaths in F360, get the correct feeds/speeds and other settings right, and learn how to use the 3d toolpaths. The 2d stuff is pretty straightforward, but the 3d toolpath options are a bit foreign.

I spend vast majority of my time in CAM. Tweaking settings and creating toolpaths, watch the simulation, go back and tweak more settings… rinse and repeat. After I’ve got the toolpaths created like I want running the actual carve has been pretty uneventful. Interesting you say a lot of folks are unhappy with theirs. I’ll have to read up more to see if there are any specific issues I should keep my eye out for.

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