Drilling Holes

Drilling Holes #

Holes can be milled with a flat end mill or they can be drilled using a drill bit.

When drilling holes (as opposed to milling them), there will be a different .nc file for each size drill bit.

The process of creating a single .nc file for drilling holes looks like this:

graph LR A[Open
Drill File]-->|.drl|B[Generate
Geometry] B-->|.drl_cnc|D[Export
G-code]

Open Drill File #

  1. Choose File | Open Excellon, then select the drill file. The holes should immediately be plotted as red circles.

Generate Geometry #

  1. In the “Project” tab, double-click the .drl list item
  2. Select a single tool number in the “Tools” list
  3. Verify that the settings under “Create CNC Job” match what was entered in the “Exellon Options” section of Configuring FlatCAM
  4. Click the “Generate” button under “Create CNC Job”

Export G-code #

  1. In the “Project” tab, double-click the .drl_cnc list item
  2. Click the “Export G-Code” button
  3. Select a destination folder for the file and give it a name that includes the size of the drill bit to be used for this job. For example, drillholes_.89916.nc

Repeat for Addition Drill Sizes #

Repeat all of the steps after the “Open Drill File” above, for each of the different sized holes in the list. When generating each .nc file, be sure to include the size of the bit in the filename.