Design guidelines for composite, plastic, and wood

Specifications, tips, and best practices for designing your CNC machined composite, plastic, and wood materials.
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Table of Contents

Best file formats for CNC machine routing

Files Accepted by Our Instant Quote System:

Adobe Illustrator.ai
AutoCAD.dxf, .step, .stp
CorelDraw.eps
Fusion.dxf, .step, .stp
Inkscape.eps
SolidWorks.dxf, .step, .stp

For laser cutting, we accept 2D vector files in the following formats: DXF (Preferred), AI (Adobe Illustrator), EPS, and DWG.

We also accept 3D files in the STEP and STP formats. If there’s trouble uploading your file, please see our STEP/STP file guide.

If you design your parts in non-CAD software (Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, CorelDraw) please send us the original (native) .ai or .eps file. We’ll take care of the conversion on our end.

Please note that we cannot accept or process STL (mesh) files or raster-type (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP) files. 

Stuck with only a raster file (JPEG, GIF, PNG)?

We have tutorials to help you convert your art to a vector format in Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape.

Tooling diameter and radius

For CNC routed materials, we use a chip-subtractive method (2-dimensional CNC flatbed machining) to cut your parts. We’ll use a 0.125″ bit, so allow for a radius of .063” on all internal geometry and minimum hole size of .125”.

You can find the minimum hole and minimum bridging/webbing specifications for each material thickness in our material pages. Learn how to find minimum cut requirements for any material.

Simple, 2-dimensional, perpendicular cuts

  • No V-groves
  • No Threads
  • No 3D Contours
  • No Partial Depth Cuts
  • No Double-Sided Cuts
  • No Counter Bores

Minimum and maximum part sizes

For composite materials, we are limiting the minimum and maximum part sizes in order to provide you with the quickest and most efficient CNC machining possible.

Minimum part size:

  • 1” x 2”

Maximum part size:

  • 44” x 23” (Delrin) 
  • 44” x 30” (ABS, ACM, HDPE, MDF, Plywood, and UHMW)

 

Overall size limitations for cutting by material can also be found in our part sizing chart

CNC router tabs

All parts machined using the CNC router will have small fixturing tabs leftover on the edges. We use these tabs to ensure your parts remain in place and secure during the manufacturing process.

Tabs will be approximately .1875″ wide, and the depth will be equal to half of your chosen material thickness. These tabs can be easily sanded down and will not affect your final design in any way. 

Check out our information on using fixture tabs in CNC machining if you have further questions.

Internal geometry considerations

Inside angles (acute angles) will have a slight radius due to the use of a round cutting tool. The radius will be .063″ due to the tool’s .125″ diameter.

Outside corners are unaffected, but tooling limitations make it impractical for us to produce perfectly square or sharp inside corners.

Material removal and design density considerations

Parts with large amounts of material removal may be impractical for us to produce. Grills, grates, and perforated patterns are not recommended and may be rejected.

We recommend no more than 50% material removed from a given part. The more material that you remove, the greater the risk that your part will move during the cutting process and become damaged.

Using dogbone fillets for square corners

If you have been designing in CAD for any length of time, you will be familiar with standard fillets. You may be less familiar with another type of fillet commonly used with CNC milling: The “Dogbone” fillet.

A standard fillet is used to reduce the sharpness of corners. You can modify corners with either a chamfer or curve.

The solution: Dogbone fillets!

However, for materials that are CNC machined, the inner corners can never be sharper than the diameter of the cutting tool. This is because the tooling is round, and it’s not possible to get perfectly square corners on interior geometry. Instead, these corners will be slightly rounded inwards (approximately .063″ radius). This can cause problems when joining parts, as a part with square edges might not fit in a hole or slot with rounded corners.

We’re unable to accommodate plunge cuts; all holes and slots must be at least 0.125″ wide.

Ready, set go!

Now that you have the knowledge you are ready to start designing your parts for the CNC mill. Questions? Reach out to our support team.

Pre-flight checklist

Start your first SendCutSend project today!

Upload your CAD design, or try one of our customizable part templates to get instant pricing on your custom laser cut parts. All delivered to your door in a matter of days.