I got a file from Etsy (an STL that I imported into Fusion). I was a little surprised that the STL file had almost no depth compared to the image they showed in the store. Is that normal?
In any case here is the results. It was on some softwood pallet wood. A lot of it was good learning exercise. The big hole is when I was only using double sided tape and piece came loose. Backside was also not completely flat so I’m sure that didn’t help.
The finishing pass was with a 1/8" flat end mill because I currently don’t have anything smaller or different of that size. The finishing passes also went in parallel with grain of wood which I’m wondering if it was a mistake. Sometimes there would be long strings of wood from a pass that would even get wrapped around the bit. There was a lot of fuzziness and even “stringiness” left on the piece.
@DavidB You may have better luck if you can set your passes to go 45° to the direction of the grain. I don’t know if that’s possible in fusion. I use VCarve exclusively. If you can’t do that in Fusion, consider rotating the material 45° for the model carving.
@Chucky_ott I must respectfully disagree. I have done may projects that way with good results. All this to say that testing should be done before daring good wood. However, IMHO and in my experience definitively stating that 45° will have the worst results is not supported by others’ experiences.
To be honest, saying 45° (or any other degree) without referencing the grain orientation is meaningless.
And you’ll notice that for for me, the fuzz for all pieces was at the bottom left quadrant, regardless of the angle of cut. That might have to do with the slope of the wood at that location. A different shaped 3D carve might have given different results.
I would concur with everyone else cutting at 45 deg solves a lot. The other I would make 2 toolpaths i using 1/8 flat end mill as a rough cut then 1/8 1mm tapered ball nose as the finish cut to get a cleaner smoother cut. I use Carveco witch allows you set height and width and depth of the cut. So you get more 3D detail.
I’m saying that I have had excellent results. It’s up to the OP to test and form his own opinion.