The first place a lot of people start with CNC machines is with 2-axis cutting. There are typically three types of machines that fall into this category. Waterjet, Laser cutter, and plasma cutter. The thing that these three machines have in common is that the tool is not spinning, but only moving in X and Y axes. CNC Routing is often though of as a 2-axis machine, but with the addition of a spinning tool I typically consider those 2.5-axis machines.

Programming a 2-axis cutting machine is the most straight-forward process for CAM (other than 3D printing which does most of this work for you). So to get started in our CAM journey we are going to take a look at programming a sheet metal bracket, one of the more common 2-axis cutting parts.

For this lesson we will use the dataset 2 Axis Adapter Plate.f3d