how to drill only 3 sides?

[frankbuss]

The work space of my CNC machine is too small for a project, so I need to mill it in 2 steps, 2nd step the stock rotated by 180°. I'm trying this by splitting the model in half, and then rotating it by 180° before creating the gcode file. But for the outline (it is a panel) I need to mill only 3 sides of a profile face. How can I do this?

[chrisb]

You don't have to split anything. If you create a job then a clone of your model is created (Job->Model->ModelBody) You can turn that into the direction you want.
In your case you would have three jobs.

[frankbuss]

Why 3 jobs? Maybe I didn't explain it right. I understand that I can use 2 jobs. But how can I just mill 3 sides of a pad? This is what I'm trying to do:



I used a "Contour" operation for the pad. So I want to mill the red parts in the first step, then I will rotate the part in my milling machine, then I want to mill the red parts in the second step.

[herbk]

Hi,

why nobody takes a look to the forum before asking?...
There are several Threads about this theme from last time, - two threads down you will find the posible solutions.

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=40120

[chrisb]

I see, I thought you were talking about drilling three sides such as top/side/bottom. As I understand it now it is more about three sides milling, perhaps due to clamping restrictions. There was recently a similar topic, which may give you some insights.

Edit: crossposted with Herbert.

[frankbuss]

Thanks, I'll try it with a helper pad.