Poor carving quality

[campy76]

Hello,
I am relatively new to this machine, so I am hoping my problem is just user error. Even when I purchase a pattern from the carvewright store and place in on my piece in the design software, the finished piece has never come out as detailed as it looks on the software designer. Inevitably, if the piece is intricate, small pieces will have broekn off of the finished piece. Are there any suggestions out there?

[Kenm810]

campy76,

What type of wood are you carving and at what depth,
a lot of low grade or wide grained woods carve poorly like Bass or Soft Pine.
Most hard woods or woods with tight dense grains carve better, like Cherry or Hard Maple.
Also you might need to add a little draft to your graphics or text to widen it's base and help prevent chip-out. :wink:

[mtylerfl]

Hello,
I am relatively new to this machine, so I am hoping my problem is just user error. Even when I purchase a pattern from the carvewright store and place in on my piece in the design software, the finished piece has never come out as detailed as it looks on the software designer. Inevitably, if the piece is intricate, small pieces will have broekn off of the finished piece. Are there any suggestions out there?

TIPS to do before carving:

• Apply a small or medium Draft to patterns that have thin, raised areas - this applies a slight angled 'ramp' to the details of a pattern and helps reduce or eliminate chip-out issues

• Be sure to right-click the pattern and select "Bit Optimization: BEST" - this makes sure the carving bit's angle is compensated for and assures the pattern will carve as it was designed (this is a step VERY commonly missed by most beginners)

• Avoid using open-grained woods for carvings that have small/thin raised details. Red Oak is beautiful, but when machined, is prone to chip out small/thin raised details due to the open-grained nature of the wood. Tight-grained hardwoods carve best. I use Select Pine (kiln-dried, flat, even) and achieve excellent results as far as carving quality. I have not been pleased with Poplar or 'regular' pine.

• When uploading to the memory card, choose "BEST" or OPTIMAL" for the overall carving process

[AskBud]

Adding to Michael's post, here are some more thoughts.

When you place the pattern on your design, look at the beginning depth and height. It may have been selected, by the vendor, to work well on a given size project. You must adjust that depth, and height, to best work with the size you want to apply.

You must consider the tip of the carving bit, which is 1/16", and the "taper" of the bit as well. The wood is moving about 6/1000 with each pass of the bit and therefore will over-carve the higher areas very rapidly. The smaller your carve, the more rapidly this situation occurs.
AskBud

[www.go3d.us]

Also set bit optimization to best will help bring out the most detail of a pattern, even carved in draft mode.

[Rapidroy]

I always check the depth of the carve as stated above, most are set at .25 I like .1875 or less.

[TIMCOSBY]

to carve too small of an item too. if you could post mpc or pics might help us help you.
and welcom to the forum.

[c6craig]

Also set bit optimization to best will help bring out the most detail of a pattern, even carved in draft mode.

I'm one of the newbies that have never used bit optimization - does it add much time to the carve? Is it like going from normal to optimal on the regular settings?

Thanks,
Craig

[TIMCOSBY]

what it does is keeps the bit from carving parts of the design that have already been carved taking into account for the angle of the side of the bit. may even take some time off because it doesnt have to go as deep but prolly not enough to notice.

[mtylerfl]

Hello,

If you are not using the "Bit Optimization: BEST", you have never really seen the quality of output the machine is capable of. On high-quality, professionally made patterns, this is the way to assure you will get the best possible detail from a pattern as the designer intended.

You can view the difference in Designer just by comparing the on-screen preview of a pattern on a board layout with and without the BEST Bit Optimization. Sometimes the difference in quality is extremely obvious. I shudder to think of anyone NOT using "Bit Optimization: BEST" on the patterns we create at CarveBuddy - they just won't carve at the high-quality like they are supposed to.

Home-made patterns can be a different story. Sometimes the quality is so poor to begin with, leaving the Bit Optimization at "None" might mask some of the "icky" parts of a poorly made pattern and could actually make it look better than it really is!

Bottom line - test for yourself when in doubt. A well-designed pattern will nearly always carve better and look better using Bit Optimization: BEST.

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Also, very good points about the depth/height issue. A pattern's default depth/height is usually the best starting point. However, this is highly dependent upon on the know-how of a pattern creator, as he/she should strive to get the best detail rendition at the lowest depth/height possible. This is to allow some flexibility for the end-user to enlarge a pattern if desired. Ideally, the user will have some 'wiggle room' for increasing the depth/height settings. If the original pattern is too thick to begin with, there may not be any room to make this adjustment.

I've written about this several times... if you enlarge a pattern, at some point you will notice the detail starts to suffer. This means you will need to increase depth/height to compensate for that lost detail. This is the nature of relief patterns...they all tend to 'flatten out' the details when enlarged too much from the default original size. The only way to bring back detail is to increase the depth and/or height of the pattern. (This was covered in one of the Tips & Tricks and also explained in your Designer software manual.)

Since the majority of carves are performed on 3/4" stock, it is a challenge for any pattern maker to get good detail in as shallow of a thickness as possible to allow for increasing a pattern's depth/height settings by the end-user. A good goal for pattern makers is to try to stay between 1/4" to 1/2" thickness, with the bias to achieve the desired detail in as little overall depth as possible. Vector Art 3D is perhaps the most widely known company for offering relief patterns for the CNC industry around the world and have a lot of real-world experience to draw upon. They have very specific guidelines for pattern makers...one of them is to pay attention to the "quarter-inch-thickness" rule of thumb when creating patterns that fill an area about 6"x6" in size at high resolution during the design stage. They recommend a 3/8" maximum pattern thickness to keep in mind (rather than 1/2"). Of course, there will be some exceptions, but it is a good guideline.

Maybe more info than you wanted, but I hope I've been able to shed a little more light on the subject!

[campy76]

All,
Thank you very much for all of your input. I know this machine is going to be an incredible asset to my projects, I guess I just need to sit down and figure out how to use it properly. Thanks again!
Jon