Our SawMill Creek Server Administrator Aaron Koehl has been at it again, developing a new utility for Corel Draw that creates one click keyholes in Corel Draw and then it automatically creates the ShopBot machining (toolpath) file.
Aaron's new program has a menu that allows you to set the size of your keyhole, the slot length and depth. Every time you click on the screen another keyhole pops in your drawing. Once you have located the keyholes where you want them the menu has a button you click to create the necessary toolpaths to machine the keyholes. You get two sbp files, one for roughing with a 1/4" spiral bit and one for the final cut using a keyhole router bit.
Late last night Aaron tested his new program for the first time and it worked well. We still need to do some serious testing for a couple of weeks and Aaron needs to create an installer for the program.
This is very cool stuff.
Think about it....machining a keyhole hanger means the router bit has to descend into the material, then move in the X direction to cut the sub-surface slot, then move back to the original position (-X) before it rises up.
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