Hello!
Recently I designed and printed some 3D printing parts which i would like to have milled in aluminium. After doing some extensive research and asking for quotes from companies near me I came to the conclusion that this is going to be more difficult than I expected. I found out STL is basically based around the idea that you build things from nothing, while milling of course is all about removing material. One of the companies replied that they could not operate with STL and needed a STEP file, which I haven’t managed to convert so far.
Doing some random googling I found a program called Cambam, and some shady tutorials which somewhat taught me to create toolpaths, which seemed to me what you need to program your CNC milling machine (AKA G-code?)
Anyways, I managed to poop out some G code with the program, but having taught myself all this within a day makes me very uncertain about whether this is going to work, or if it is even worth showing to one of the people who are willing to mill this for me.
So, I was wondering if any of you guys have any idea about how to convert a 3D printing model to a file extension that will allow me to have it milled. I will attatch both the STL file and shady Gcode to this post. I’d appreciate any tips, comments or resource material I can use! (doesnt let me upload STL or .NC files, zipped them)
Sorry for being a total newb,
Thanks in advance,
Kevin