Hi William, I've not followed this whole thread, but if you want to cnc
finger joints, I would not start with scad. What cutting tool will you
be using, and what is the material? What tolerances are you looking for?
Unless you intend standing the pieces on edge, you will not get square
corners profiling them with a router bit, although if in wood, with a
small diameter bit, woodfiller can solve that. If you are using edm,
plasma, laser or waterjet, then that will require a different solution,
depending on how thick the material is too. The tricky area is the
interface between theory and practicality. It would be relatively
trivial to 3d print it, if it was just a proof of the model you were
looking for - But you'd most likely have to take into account tolerances
again.

Best wishes,

Ray

On 13/08/2020 18:54, William F. Adams via Discuss wrote:

You can get close with include <>, if you wrap the data with "file1=[" and "];"

You would need to format to suit.

From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces@lists.openscad.org] On Behalf Of A. Craig West
Sent: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 01:55
To: OpenSCAD general discussion
Subject: Re: [OpenSCAD] Potential uses for writing out text files from OpenSCAD (was Re: Managed to
model a finger joint box with relieved fingers --- now how to actually cut it? Allow OpenSCAD to
write out files?)

I am actually more interested in arbitrary file input, but both input and output would be useful.
Must of my libraries work entirely in userspace, so I have all of the co-ordinate already

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020, 11:43 Jordan Brown, openscad@jordan.maileater.net wrote:

If you want to experiment with writing other file types, it's not too hard.  Use echo() and
copy-paste the output, or run OpenSCAD from the command line and capture the output.  You'd have to
post-process it a bit to remove the noise, but it wouldn't be terribly hard.  nop head does this to
generate BOMs.  I do it to generate lists of models from multi-model files.

But make sure that you can actually do what you want before thinking about adding new features.
Remember that nothing in the OpenSCAD language has access to the coordinates.

translate([x,y,z]) {
/* Nothing here has any way to access the the new origin in global coordinates. */
}

If you want access to the coordinates you'd have to do your own transforms in parallel.

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Ray West wrote:

Apparently.

It's the CAD tool which I prefer to use --- and I've modeled fingerjoints in it before:
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/cnc-finger-joint-box/8880

I am planning on using a 1/4" square endmill, a 1/16" ball-nosed tapered endmill, and a 1/4" radiusing endmill.

Tight enough for a void free joint.

I created a fixture for doing that:
https://cutrocket.com/p/5cb25f3380844/
and I've cut boxes thus:
https://cutrocket.com/p/5cb536396c281/
It's a tedious pain.

The refuge of the incompetent woodworker --- I'm trying to design a joinery system where joints have no visible voids --- hence the radius endmill which I intend to use to relieve the fingers to match the radius left by the 1/4" endmill. See the images at:
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/design-into-3d-boxes-magazine-storage/16238/54
and
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/cnc-finger-joint-box/8880/113
and
https://imgur.com/g9pQxS6
William

Hi,

Use scad for showing the picture, but imnsho, you would be better off
generating the gcode separately. I've attached a screen shot of a simple
box generator - no cad used whatsoever. The joints are not finger
joints, but are a sort of stepped butt joint, modern glues are stronger
than the wood.

I'm not sure if you need the ballnosed bit, or the tapered bit. Tool
changing is a pain, unless you have some high end machine, or possibly
designing a machine specifically for making finger joints. I've used 
cutters similar to this, quite successfully for wood carving, which sort
of combines a taper and a ballend.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SpeTool-Tapered-2-Flute-0-25mm-Coated/dp/B077883PDW/ref=sr_1_13?dchild=1&keywords=tapered+milling+cutter&qid=1597401368&sr=8-13

I'm guessing you have a sort of flatbed cnc routing table, and you do
not really want to have to change tool bits, or manipulate the sheet
which you are machining, and all pieces will be the same thickness for
an individual box. I hope the juice will be worth the squeeze. It will
be fun getting the fingers correct at the corners. Maybe start by
restricting the dimensions to a multiple of the finger size  plus.

Best wishes,

Ray

On 14/08/2020 02:56, William F. Adams via Discuss wrote:

I've done boxes like that already:
https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/3d-project and https://cutrocket.com/p/5e8fd99cc1578/
and as noted, I've already managed to get the corners right for a fingerjoint box, which was the beginning of this conversation which apparently no one deemed worthy of actually looking at.
https://imgur.com/g9pQxS6

I want to do my CAD and CAM in OpenSCAD --- all I need to make it available to in an elegant (in terms of scientifically correct) and robust fashion which naïve users can make use of it is a way to get some numbers which I am using to call modules in OpenSCAD already into a text file without any extraneous stuff which has to be filtered out.
Yes, I could use some 3rd party tool --- then I get to tell folks:
 - install OpenSCAD and use it to set up your design - install a second tool, and run this other file as well, and tell it where you put your OpenSCAD file and what name you saved your Customizer preset under

It's an unnecessary complication --- if only OpenSCAD would be allowed to have a bit more control over writing out text files --- which would be useful for other purposes as well such as B.O.M.s
Yes, I've done something along those lines as documented in my article in:
http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents40-2.html
but it's a lot of extra baggage when a simple couple of preferences and one basic capability could sidestep it:
 - write out console with each run of openscad - when writing out console filter to only lines output by echo - use custom file extension ____ instead of .nc 
(though it would be nice if that last could be specified in the language/file as a command)
William

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray West raywest@raywest.com
To: William F. Adams via Discuss discuss@lists.openscad.org
Sent: Fri, Aug 14, 2020 6:47 am
Subject: Re: [OpenSCAD] !![SPAM]!! Re: Is there an OpenSCAD dev who wants a CNC machine? (was Re: Managed to model a finger joint box with relieved fingers --- now how to actually cut it? Allow OpenSCAD to write out files?)

Hi, Use scad for showing the picture, but imnsho, you would be better off generating the gcode separately. I've attached a screen shot of a simple box generator - no cad used whatsoever. The joints are not finger joints, but are a sort of stepped butt joint, modern glues are stronger than the wood.
I'm not sure if you need the ballnosed bit, or the tapered bit. Tool changing is a pain, unless you have some high end machine, or possibly designing a machine specifically for making finger joints. I've used  cutters similar to this, quite successfully for wood carving, which sort of combines a taper and a ballend. https://www.amazon.co.uk/SpeTool-Tapered-2-Flute-0-25mm-Coated/dp/B077883PDW/ref=sr_1_13?dchild=1&keywords=tapered+milling+cutter&qid=1597401368&sr=8-13 I'm guessing you have a sort of flatbed cnc routing table, and you do not really want to have to change tool bits, or manipulate the sheet which you are machining, and all pieces will be the same thickness for an individual box. I hope the juice will be worth the squeeze. It will be fun getting the fingers correct at the corners. Maybe start by restricting the dimensions to a multiple of the finger size  plus.
Best wishes,
Ray
On 14/08/2020 02:56, William F. Adams via Discuss wrote:

Ray West wrote:

Apparently.

It's the CAD tool which I prefer to use --- and I've modeled fingerjoints in it before:
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/cnc-finger-joint-box/8880

I am planning on using a 1/4" square endmill, a 1/16" ball-nosed tapered endmill, and a 1/4" radiusing endmill.

Tight enough for a void free joint.

I created a fixture for doing that:
https://cutrocket.com/p/5cb25f3380844/
and I've cut boxes thus:
https://cutrocket.com/p/5cb536396c281/
It's a tedious pain.

The refuge of the incompetent woodworker --- I'm trying to design a joinery system where joints have no visible voids --- hence the radius endmill which I intend to use to relieve the fingers to match the radius left by the 1/4" endmill. See the images at:
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/design-into-3d-boxes-magazine-storage/16238/54
and
https://community.carbide3d.com/t/cnc-finger-joint-box/8880/113
and
https://imgur.com/g9pQxS6
William

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I'm not sure exactly what question you are asking. Is it that you, for
some reason or other, you want openscad to be able to produce a text
file, possibly a list of coordinates, that you will manipulate somehow
to produce tool paths, or is it that you are trying to design a joinery
system? If you are trying to design a joinery system, then openscad is
not much use, other than perhaps as a check to see if the object looks
OK. For the sort of tooling/machinery you are most likely wanting to
use, even if openscad could write a text file, it would probably be more
awkward adjusting that file, than starting from scratch, and writing raw
gcode. As you say you have done similar before, you know how
straightforward that is, then there is little point in trying to push
openscad in a direction that apparently few are interested in.

Although openscad can produce the model, then you are stuck in getting
another view of it. If you create the model by some other method, most
likely you can more easily get more views of it (MVC paradigm). In other
words, generate a list of coordinates, then you can display them on a
screen (openscad/whatever) and generate offsets for Gcodes for machining
in whatever way you wish.

Have you actually made a sketch of how a couple of the fingers, say,
actually mesh together, when prepared by what ever router bits you can use?

Best wishes,

Ray

If this stuff was easy, everybody would be doing it...

On 14/08/2020 15:41, William F. Adams via Discuss wrote:

-o file.echo only captures the echos. Then all you need to do is remove the
ECHO: " " around it. An option to remove those would be handy.

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 17:20, Jordan Brown openscad@jordan.maileater.net
wrote:

Jordan Brown wrote:

which is exactly why I'm trying to make this as straight-forward as possible.
Ray West wrote:

It would help if you'd look at the posts and images I've referenced.

Having designed a joinery system, I want to write out G-Code so that the parts can be cut out, since I haven't found a CAM program which will cut out the joinery designs I have created:
https://old.reddit.com/r/openscad/comments/i2do7a/managed_to_model_a_finger_joint_box_with_relieved/

I beg to differ. I find it very useful for the design --- please see the image:
https://imgur.com/g9pQxS6

I've posted pseudo code for getting the G-Code out of the radiuscut module which I wrote.

Argumentum ad populum

In my design work I always design from the manufacturing view, then rotate as needed.

Or, I could continue to just rotate in OpenSCAD

The way that I wish to generate them is to write them out of OpenSCAD.

Yes, see the links in my previous message.

nop head wrote:

Thank you for pointing this out --- it's quite helpful to me.

Agreed, as would exposing this with a menu option or preference.
William