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CQ-CAM aims to become a free, parametric CAM solution for 3-axis CNC mills closely integrating with CadQuery.

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⚠ ATTENTION ⚠

A parallel project exists with a significantly larger feature set at the cost of having a hard dependency to FreeCAD libraries: ocp-freecad-cam

Regardless of the dependency, the advantages with the approach of ocp-freecad-cam appear to be such that further development of cq-cam may not be relevant anymore.

CQ-CAM

CQ-CAM aims to become a free, parametric CAM solution for 3-axis CNC mills closely integrating with CadQuery.

Documentation: https://cq-cam.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

⚠ NOTE ⚠

Highly experimental at this stage. Expect bugs and always inspect the generated gcode.

2023-04-22: A major refactoring has been merged, likely breaking features that were present in v0.1. Proceed with extra caution if using the untsable branch!

Requirements and installation

Install locally editable development version

Install cadquery and the optional deps (CQ-Editor, opencamlib).

Clone this repo, navigate to the source folder and run pip install -e .

Install release version

As above, install cadquery and the optional deps (CQ-Editor, opencamlib) and run pip install cq-cam

Contributions

Feedback is welcome. Please discuss before proposing changes or opening PR's.

Roadmap to v1.0

The scope of v1.0 is open for the time being. Some possibilities are

  • Climb/Conventional
  • Bore Operation (helical drilling)
  • Optimize rapid and cut order (opt-2? meanwhile if you need more optimized rapids check out https://gcode-sort.web.app/)
  • Other strategies
  • Ramps

Current features (v0.1)

See https://cq-cam.readthedocs.io/en/latest/operations.html for a showcase of different operations and features.

  • 2.5D Profiling
  • 2.5D Pocketing with ZigZag and Contour strategies
  • 3D Surface with ZigZag strategy, using opencamlib
  • Drill Operation
  • Visualizing toolpaths in CQ-Editor (requires master version)
  • G-Code generation
  • Profiling tabs
  • Optimize rapid and cut order (nearest neighbour)

Permanently outside of scope

  • Simulation
  • Lathes and 4D

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CQ-CAM aims to become a free, parametric CAM solution for 3-axis CNC mills closely integrating with CadQuery.

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