Paper Tools is like full self-driving for CNC. As fast and direct as your manual tools, you just measure and mark your material. A video camera “sees” your marks, then autopilots your CNC to find their precise position, with repeatability of +/- 0.002”. All the code to make your cuts is generated without touching CAD or CAM—using any tool on any material. Paper Tools works with your CNC router, mill, plasma, laser and more!
<aside> 🐣 Paper Tools is in early release. For free. Wanna try it? Go here.
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Hello, Person. You’re not a “user”, you’re a real live human being (I think). So I’d like to introduce you to our Person Interface.
In this view, the CNC machine is on auto-pilot heading towards a square drawn on the piece of paper seen by the camera. You can also see my “Demo” project showing the captured frame, coordinates, and labels. In each tab you can find other frames you’ve captured, Paper Tools to download and use, your Tool library, Materials and even Fixtures. Add any of these into your project and get cutting!
Animation showing the distance between the camera and your tool.
With a video camera attached to your CNC machine and a Paper Tool, you can do simple things to get your CNC machine cutting your material in just a few minutes—so toss your hole saws and finally use your super-clean CNC for all your everyday work.
Like a hole saw kit, this bore Paper Tool has a variety of common hole sizes and depths each with a target, a visual representation of your result, and an instruction step that Paper Tools can read. I measure and mark my material like the good old days, with a caliper and a pen, then position the bore Paper Tool above my mark. Printing on tracing paper lets me see through it to line it up with my marked material. Paper Tools then navigates my CNC machine to precisely find the target under the camera. In just a few seconds I put a hole in a piece of material right where I want it using my nice precise CNC machine instead of a manual drill press and a crusty hole saw waggling all around making a jagged mess.
CNC machines have incredible capabilities: a robot you control to do your bidding complete with a powerful cutting tool? Hell yeah! But they are hard to use: CAD, CAM, Toolpaths, GCode, Controller Software, G54, and so on.