What are some appropriate values to use for the Mount Hole diameter and Plate Corner radius? I used 2.7mm and 2mm respectively and the edge of the holes are about 1.15mm from the edge of the plate. I'm not sure if that would lead to the head of the screw overhanging the plate.
These are good questions and I don't really have a good answer for you. I would suggest that if you are going to use M2 screws that you make the holes at least 2.25mm in diameter. Some of the cuts that I have seen from BBS so far are erroring on slightly too small (like .15mm smaller than drawn). This should ensure that the screws will fit through without issues even if the hole is slightly smaller than spec.
As for the overhang. I will have to get a caliper on the heads of some M2 (and M3) screws when I get home to give you a better idea of what you should be looking at for this.
Thanks, that would be really helpful.
Actually I just downloaded the latest version of librecad and loaded my dxf file up. Trying to now re-save it but the latest version of DXF it supports is 2007. Re-saving as this and uploading to BBS still doesnt work. I've set the default values of the program to inches. Anything else I need to do.
I thought someone had reported that it had worked. I will do more testing tonight and will try to make this clearer in the tool since it is coming up often.
That might have been me. I just tried again with Draftsight and LibreCAD. It worked fine with both. LibreCAD worked fine as DXF 2007.
Alright, when I put a caliper on the screws I have I get the following:
M2 Screw section: 1.9mm
M2 Head: 3.4mm
M3 Screw section: 2.9mm
M3 Head: 5.1mm
I found this chart to be helpful for understanding what size holes I should be using.
https://littlemachineshop.com/Reference/TapDrillSizes.pdfHope those measurements help...
As for converting the DXF files:
- I have tested with
LibreCAD exporting as DXF 2007 and it works perfectly for uploading to BBS. NOTE: My default unit of measure in LibreCAD is MM. I have this setting in: Preferences > Defaults > Unit
- I was going to try DraftSight, but my evaluation expired and I was too lazy to do anything about it.
- I tried Teigha File Converter, but since the source file does not have UOM, it defaults to inches, so this does not help us. If you need to convert a DXF 2007 with UOM correctly set to mm and you need it in a different format like DXF 2013, this would be a good option. Keep in mind that you want to use ASCII in order for it to be usable by BBS.
- I tested with Inkscape, and it did not work. I ended up with a corrupted file.
In short, I think LibreCAD is the best option. It is quick and easy to download and run and it is cross platform and free.