CADing a baseplate

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Originally Posted by Gray Adams

It took me about that long just to fillet all the corners. There were like 300. I'm not sure that was worth the effort.

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. My CAM software would have just done toolpaths that would have given me a fillet radius of the tool radius, but I don't want the tool to squeak in the corners when milling, so I put in all the fillets. I could pattern many of them, but after adding all the electronics mounting locations, there were many that had to be manually put in. It takes a decent computer. And for all you who waterjet your diamond pattern baseplates, yeah, we did ours on a router. 6 hours of babysitting a machine with a spray bottle of WD-40 in-hand. In the end though, I'd say it was worth it. If done well, it's a really nice piece, and makes it a joy to weld and wire.