This is a small tool that I use to assist manufacturing of front panels for PCBs designed in KiCad. It processes a .kicad_pcb file and generates cutouts for specific components that are to appear on the front panel, such as LEDs, displays, switches, pots, etc.

Various output formats are supported, including SVG (which can be used for laser-cutting or as the basis for artwork), OpenSCAD, GCode for a CNC mill or a CSV list of drill hits/cuts for manual machining.

Most of my front panels are for eurorack synthesisers, so some of the output modes (e.g. GCode) make strong assumptions about panel dimensions, etc.

Generate SVG artwork from a board file:

$ ./board_cam.py --format=svg ~/projects/midicv/midicv.kicad_pcb > midicv.svg

Generate GCode to machine a eurorack front panel, excluding one component:

$ ./board_cam.py --skip_components=SW2 \
      --format=gcode ~/projects/midicv/midicv.kicad_pcb > midicv.nc

This tool requires Python 3.x, KiCad and its associated Python support to be installed.

If you want to use the SVG output mode then the svgwrite Python module must also be installed.

This tool matches components found on the PCB against a list of footprints that are considered for inclusion on the front panel. These are contained in the footprints.def file. The format is hopefully fairly obvious.

Footprints currently may have either round or rectangular cutouts that may be optionally offset of KiCad's footprint origin. If adding footprints to this file, then care must be taken around dimensions and offsets - many KiCad footprint modules do not place the elements of interest for a front panel at the footprint origin.

This tool may be used to generate GCode to automatically machine a front panel. At the moment, the GCode output module assumes eurorack dimensions and will automatically size and locate the board to suit.

The GCode processor uses a list of tools tools.cfg to specify drills for various sized holes, as well as a milling tool for slotting operations. The processor will generate slotting code for rectangular cutouts as well as for circular holes for which no drill matches. Feeds and speeds can be specified per-tool, and various coolant modes are supported.

Drill hits may be pre-drilled using a small bit (I use a 2mm stub bit) before being processed with the full-size drill. All drill hits are emitted using chip-breaking canned cycles (G73) with fairly conservative parameters. Slotting is performed with cutter compensation enabled.

The GCode output has only been tested with my mill controller (Centroid Acorn), but it doesn't make use of anything too fancy. Do take care of course - nobody likes a mill crash.