Going to make a friend a few signs she will hang from her tent at markets. Seems hdpe is the material to use since it will be outdoors and needs to be lightweight. Just need to be white and black like my mockup.
Seeking pointers since this expensive material scares me. $60 just for a 12x24 half inch sheet. Local supplier only sells full sheets.
60 degree vbit looks good in the simulation although I cant accurately see the dual layers in Carveco. Or can I? Will that bit suffice?
Also making these double sided so I have to keep depth of cut to .20” max.
Any other pointers?
Hi Greg,
I have seen some pictures and maybe videos on that material. I have never done other material than wood so cannot be of assistance there.
If I stood in your clumps, I would first play around with the material before starting the actual carve. There is some spare inside your design that can be used for that.
I doubt if vcarving the material is the way to go though. Vcarving variates the depth of cut between max dept (being pointy bottom or a set depth the bit won’t carve below.) And the starting dept.
If the goal is to have the lettering the second color in the material, vcarve might not give the desired result.
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Have you considered PVC? You can get it in white boards at HD. And they take paint well
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I actually just might do that. Do you use latex paint? Primer needed?
I haven’t done signs but I did use it as a fascia. I tested latex pain with and without a primer and a scratch test didn’t show any difference. And it was an excellent primer too (Insl-X Stix).
Being PVC, I assume you could bond pieces together with clear PVC cement…but I haven’t tried it.
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Think I am going to do pvc, oramask and paint.
Found some helpful videos from this guy. Sharing in case someone else comes across this.
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I’ve milled plexiglass before and it was hard to get the right feed and speed to not melt. That is until I got the right bit. He probably mentions these in the video’s but I don’t feel like watching right now. I’ve seem them called single flute and O-flute end mills and the difference was dramatic. Nice clean cuts without melting!
It’s got that super sharp point and the end isn’t flat. Cuts like butter.
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He had several good videos on pvc. Surprisingly he was using regular uc and dc bits. Downcut when using oramask, followed by an upcut to clean the bottom.
His speeds and feeds were super lower. And his plunges were conservative too.
