RE: Center of letters carving out?

Sorry for the delay. Hereā€™s the crv file. Iā€™ve been playing with it and trying different numbers but still not working.

Daycare Ornament.crv (3.7 MB)

Hello everyone. Newbie here. I hope you can help.

Making an ornament for my grandsonā€™s teacher. Iā€™m using a 30* vbit at .04ā€. As you can see from the pic the ā€œdā€ and ā€œeā€ in the last name. What causes the and how do I correct it?

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@Wiremand What CAD/CAM software are you using?

If Vectric, did you do this as a vcarve toolpath?

@Wiremand I suspect that the problem is that you do not have enough material left in the centre of those two letters after you have carved inside them. If you like, post the .crv file and I can look at it. Failing that, you could try either a shallower cut, a steeper bit, or even a small tapered ball nose bit.

Is it possible that the material is breaking out? You could try shallower cuts. Also, make sure your lead nuts are adjusted so there is no chance of deflection.

Thanks. I think it also has to do with the plywood. I did get it to work with a shallower cut. I havenā€™t checked but is there a steeper v it bit like 20 or 10 degree?

There are steeper bits, search for engraving bits.

Note: Some engraving bits they give the angle for one side to the center so a 5 degree is a 10 degree included angle. If you have VCarve you can see some in the tool database.

Iā€™ve had success in similar situations by increasing only the size of the inner vector, for example of the ā€œeā€. A slight change can go a long way, that way all the cuts are consistent depth, or at least as consistent as the flatness of your material.

@Wiremand You can also try a small tapered ballnose bit. Sienci sells some with a very steep profile. Iā€™ve had good luck doing small carves that would ordinarily involve a V bit.

As @_Michael mentioned, if you do try a tapered ball nose, but aware that VCarve sets them using the angle between the centre line and the outside, not the included angle.

Edit: From the pic, I didnā€™t pick up on the fact that you were using plywood. I seriously doubt that my advice to try a tapered ball nose bit will make any difference. Plywood simply is not a proper medium for this type of carve. @NeilFerreri is spot on in his advice.

Yup.
For small, detailed carves youā€™re always better off using a tight grained hardwood. Maple, cherry and walnut are great examples. Almost anything will hold more details than plywood (maybe not dimensional pine construction lumber).

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Thanks. I have some oak that I can try. I give that a try and let you know.

When I have had this issue, grainy wood is worse, but something like cherry or maple itā€™s just carving to deep. Using v care pro start with the default, no flat depth selected, it is some times that may be too deep, try a flat depth of .1 and see if that helps.

So I purchase a Whiteside 15 degree, 1/16 point, 1/4 inch shank engraving bit. However, VCARVE is giving me this error:

When I preview, its blank. Hereā€™s how I set the tool up in the database:

Here is the CRV:
Daycare Ornament.crv (3.7 MB)

Iā€™ve also noticed that when I hover over the toolpath name is says my max depth is 0.0" but canā€™t find anywhere to change it.

What am I missing?

Hey Raster,

So how did you select only one letter from the entire text? I canā€™t see to select just one letter, it only allows me to select all of the text.

You can select a single letter if you convert text to curves, the icon is in the same row as draw text. After you do that you canā€™t edit the text as text anymore.

As far as the tool not fitting, it doesnā€™t fit inside the letters. The flat depth is 0.0625 and your letters are only ~0.024 wide.

Edit: Here is a photo of one of my engraving bits.


The ā€œflatā€ is basically too small to measure. Something like these on Amazon that advertise a 0.1mm tip would fit in your letters. You may find better ones I just did a quick search.

Edit2: I just noticed that the Amazon link had 3 different bits, 15, 20 and 30 degree included angle. The 15 degree ones break the tip kinda easy in my experience but they do go deeper. If you search you may find one set that has 2 or 3 of each size in one inexpensive set.

Check this set out at $7.99 for 20 bits, who cares if they break or donā€™t last forever, IMHO. Plus you get 4 sizes to experiment with.

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@_Michael As for fitting inside the letters, why couldnā€™t I just have the z depth very shallow to etch/engrave the wood? I thought using a smaller tip (.0625) would allow more detail and if I keep the z depth shallow. Also, how did you know the letters were only ~0.024 wide. I donā€™t see that anywhere.

So this pic is what Iā€™m using as inspiration. I thought I could carve with a small angle vbit, but I keep running into problems.

When doing a v-carve the bit depth is determined by the width of the space you are carving. The bit goes deep enough that the V fills the space between the lines. So if the flat width is too wide it canā€™t fit in.

I used the measuring tool.

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words so here is a drawing I did to help explain whatā€™s going on.

In the drawing pretend the little circles are the ends of lines that extends straight into the screen. You can see from left to right how the bit angle affects the depth of the cut. The last one on the right is your bit that just canā€™t fit between the lines.

I hope this makes sense, if not let me know.

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@_Michael NOW I get it. Thanks for the explanation. I thought I could control Z to get the width I wanted.