Last modified: 2026-05-22 14:29:44
< 2026-05-16I think the CAD of the case for the keyboard glockenspiel is done, so I just need to do the CAM next.
I think I have been procrastinating on this because of all the hole-drilling I need to do. Should I be making the holes with a small router bit or with a drill? I'm tempted to try a drill, but how do I get FreeCAD to write drilling code? I think I want peck-drilling.
Maybe interpolating it with a 3mm router bit is the best way.
Great, FreeCAD not working.
QRhiGles2: Failed to create temporary context
QRhiGles2: Failed to create context
Failed to create QRhi for QBackingStoreRhiSupport
QOpenGLWidget: Failed to create context
Thanks Nvidia.
OK, fixed now. And with FreeCAD open I realise that the base plate needs lots of ~3mm holes, so interpolating with a 3mm router bit wouldn't work very well. So probably I actually do want to be able to use drills. These holes are meant to be a press fit for a 3mm pin, so maybe a 2.9mm drill?
I've got FreeCAD to do a "drilling" cycle for the holes, with peck and chip-break enabled, will see if it works.
It didn't. It generated a "G73" for the drilling cycle, even with the post-processor set to Grbl, and Grbl rejected that.
So I guess have Cursor write a script to post-process G73 into a series of G1s? [https://github.com/jes/g73-post](https://github.com/jes/g73-post)
5mm sheet:
Great success, it worked.
Now just the other 2 sheets to do, but I don't fancy it today, so will procrastinate further on that.
Update: I've done CAM for one of them, it wants a 2.9mm drilling operation. This will leave holes that are too small in 2 of the parts, and that don't go all the way through. Unsure what to do about that because FreeCAD doesn't make it easy to pick different depths for different holes.
One idea is I can just live with this and drill the bigger/deeper holes out manually afterwards. Another idea is I can manually split the generated gcode into 2 files and change the depth on one and run it with a bigger drill.
Unsure yet.
< 2026-05-16