Slicing a 3D object for printing- for DUMMIES!

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Hey everyone!

I saw a few posts about slicing using fusion 360 and I am looking to take 3d objects that we design in class and slice them up to laser cut them out. I need the simplest, easiest way. is there a tutorial out there that I could not find? currently we are using Tinkercad to make the objects, let me know if that program wont work for what I am trying to do.

thank you for all your help!

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I use the Slicer add-in for Fusion 360. There are tutorials for using it on the web site, but it’s pretty easy to pick up if you are familiar with F360. (I don’t know of any for Tinkercad, but someone else might.)

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Important fact: You don’t need to start from Fusion. You can take any STL or OBJ file from any source (Thingiverse for instance) and slice it up.

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Good to know! :grinning:

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Slicer works great. If you are trying to slice through Fusion body (To get a DXF file to cut) I have a suggestion.

This is a part of my daily workflow it seems.
This is a light pipe for an LED display.
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Turn on Construction in the browser, so your cutting plane will be visible. It should appear just below Sketches.
Start by selecting Construct> Offset plane.
Click on the face of your object, and enter a value. I often use -0.1mm, but you can slice it anywhere, as long as it slices where you want your profile to be.
Now create a sketch on the yellow construction plane you just made.
Select Sketch> Project/Intersect> Intersect In the dialog select “Bodies” not “Faces” and select the body again. Click OK.
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You should now have an outline with a bunch of purple lines.
Fence select them all, Right click and select “Break Link”

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Screen Shot 2018-11-29 at 2.41.22 AM.png525Ă—519 65 KB

They should all be blue now. Resist the urge to modify anything before exporting. If you leave it alone, it will cut in logical order , if you change it, the cutting order will be weird.
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Screen Shot 2018-11-29 at 2.42.05 AM.png550Ă—544 30.1 KB

Close your sketch, and you can now export the sketch as a DXF and import to your favorite Design app.

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Thanks for the ideas! I am going to try them out and see what happens.

here is to hoping! really want to get this working and need to keep it as simple as I can for both teachers and students.

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ok got it sliced up, how do i get it into glowforge? I have it as a .dxf file as of now.

thanks again for the help!

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I open the DXF in illustrator and convert to SVG. There is often cleanup required (I remove the numbers sometimes for looks).

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