Advice with first v-carving

I’m attempting my first v-carve with a 60º v-groove bit, and the toolpath that Carbide Create generates looks a little erratic down at the bottom of the groove in some areas where the shape is a little funky.

I want to carve a name written in a handwriting-like font, so in this case, the circle isn’t perfectly circular.

What’s the general approach when you run into this situation? Let it go and try to sand out the ridges? Something else?

simulation, zoomed in on the same spot:

It has been a number of months since I have used CC but as I recall you can go into node editing and clean up the vectors. It looks like there are a number of them that are not required. With regards to a circle you could redraw and replace the existing one.

I’ve never used CC. Do you have the option of using a flat area clearance tool?

The blue lines in the screen shot above are the CC generated toolpath based on the SVG. Not sure if that was obvious or not. I don’t really want the outline of the carving to change to a perfect circle, for what that’s worth. Maybe an alternative approach would be to do an outline carve with an end mill instead, then resaw it off of the piece and glue it down.

I don’t see an option for it in CC. Seems like a fairly basic/limited app. I’m fine starting with basics since I’ve got a grand total of 1 carve under my belt that didn’t snap an end mill. Lots of learning to do here. :slight_smile:

I can see what VCarvePro will do with it, if you like. Send me a private message with the SVG attached. Was the SVG generated by CC or did you do that in a graphics program.

If your happy with the shape then just go in and clean up the vectors. I you zoom in on the problem areas you will likely see some unwanted line, loops or dots. Delete the unwanted nodes and you should be good.

Thanks, I’ll do that. I created the SVG from a screen shot of a font that I like, using the font preview tool. (No licensing worries though, it’s a free font: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Pacifico)

Creating vectors from a screen cap is always iffy. The link that you sent to the font is broken. If this is the font https://www.dafont.com/pacifico.font, you can download it for free. I don’t know how to import fonts into CC, but I’m sure someone here could help. Then, you can actually write whatever you want and get away from using a screencap.

edit: I just went onto the carbide create site and it says that you can create vectors from any font on your computer. So, if you download the Pacifico font and install it into windows, you will be able to use it to create your project.

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Interesting. It still works for me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, yes, that’s the same font. I created the original screen shots in this thread with carbide create on a mac, and that doesn’t seem to like the Pacifico font I have installed, but my CNC controller is windows and CC works with the font fine there. I may give that a shot.

If that does not work out, send me what you want to print. I can do it in VCarvePro and send you the Gcode.

Quick note - you can also do this in F-engrave. It allows for clean up passes and you can also set a max depth.

I was going to write up a tutorial for it but have been pretty busy.

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