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Poppie
02-20-2007, 06:35 PM
When I carve this logo, the lines in the hat and shirt are too thin and raised only a tiny amount. How can I widen them and bring them upward?

Thanks for any advice.

Jeff_Birt
02-20-2007, 07:17 PM
You'll have to pull it into a photo editing software and widen the lines and then make the background black.

Matty
02-20-2007, 09:33 PM
try this it should carve ok.

http://www.idealmarking.com/carve/tx.jpg


Matty

RedBear
02-21-2007, 01:41 AM
Poppie, the software interprets pure white as the surface of the material and pure black as the deepest depth it can carve, or if your material isn't at least 1.0" thick it interprets black as "carve all the way through the material". So you can't bring the white lines "upward" since they are probably already at the surface of the material.

What you have to do is the opposite, to bring the gray carved-out area down a little further by changing the gray area in the image to a slightly darker gray. I believe Jeff_Birt is incorrect, you DO NOT want to change that gray area to black unless you intend to carve all the way through (or at least 1.0" deep into) your material.

You need to open your image in a graphics editing program like Photoshop, Corel Draw, Photoshop Elements, anything that has editing tools like the Paint Bucket tool. That would probably be the easiest way both to change the gray and to widen the lines. If I were doing this in Photoshop I would:

1. set the foreground color to a slightly darker gray than the one in the image,
2. set the bucket tool to a very low tolerance (like 10) so that it will only affect the gray area,
3. uncheck the "contiguous" setting (or manually fill the enclosed areas such as inside the "P", "e", and "A",
4. Turn OFF anti-aliasing because that will eat away at the white areas,
5. Fill in the gray area with the darker gray color. The darker the gray, the deeper the carved-away area will be, thus making the lines and lettering seem more "raised".

For widening the narrow lines, I would:

1. change the foreground color to white,
2. Set the bucket tool again to a very low tolerance so it doesn't "escape" the white lines and turn everything white,
3. CHECK the contiguous setting because you only want to do one enclosed area at a time,
4. Turn ON anti-aliasing because every time you "fill" the white lines with the bucket tool it will sort of eat away at the gray edges and the lines will "grow",
5. Click away inside the lines with the bucket tool until the lines look the way you want.

The anti-aliasing will have a side effect of making the edges of the lines less sharp when carved. You can either make everything else match by clicking inside all the other white areas ONCE (or click ONCE inside any white area in the image with the Contiguous setting turned off), or you can turn off anti-aliasing and click a couple more times inside the lines you just made bigger. That would eat away at the anti-aliased edges with pure white, making them a little sharper again.

Helpful, not helpful? I know, that was probably a lot more information than you wanted. The important concept to understand from all this is that white=shallow, gray=medium depth, black=1.0" or all the way through your material. So to raise something, cut deeper around it.

Oh, and follow good computer procedure by working on a copy of the file, in case you want to go back to the original and start over.

HandTurnedMaple
02-21-2007, 05:32 AM
I just want to disagree on one point RedBear. Black is the bottom of the carving, not "carve all the way through the material." If you set the carving depth to .250" in Designer, any black areas will carve 1/4" deep regardless of the thickness of the wood.

RedBear
02-21-2007, 05:31 PM
I just want to disagree on one point RedBear. Black is the bottom of the carving, not "carve all the way through the material." If you set the carving depth to .250" in Designer, any black areas will carve 1/4" deep regardless of the thickness of the wood.

I gotcha. That's a handy feature. So I guess he really could change the gray to black as long as he remembers to limit the carving depth to exactly what he wants. Thanks for the correction. I haven't had much chance to work with the software so I was just going by what I've read in some other posts.

On the other hand if you don't set the carving depth specifically to be less than 1.0" and/or less than the thickness of your material, won't the machine just default to carving all the way through (or down to 1.0") for black areas? Because normally don't you want black to carve all the way through?

HandTurnedMaple
02-21-2007, 05:52 PM
.250" is the default setting for carvings. You have to manually change it to carve deeper or shallower (is that a word?). If you set it too deep and cut through the board that's your own fault. :shock: Whether intentional or not its a good safety feature since the machine will not let you carve a board less than 1/2" (without a BobHill sled anyway) you will never go more than halfway through a board without user error or a Z-axis plunge.

Jeff_Birt
02-22-2007, 08:04 AM
The carving 'Depth' and 'Height' work together. If you created a graphic that was partly pure balck and partly pure white and set your depth of carving to 0.25", height set to 100 the black part of the carving will be 0.25". The white part 'should' then be at 0" or there abouts, the exact numerical relationship is unknown to me. 'Height' strectches the carving (object) vertically.

HandTurnedMaple
02-22-2007, 10:31 AM
Its a relation thing (I'm 96.743% sure). 100 = 0-.250". If you increase the depth to .5 then 100 = .250-.500", 200 = .0-.500", 150 = .125-.500". Here is a list I use to allow carving the full depth (.000"-depth):

Depth Height
.125" 50
.250" 100
.375" 150
.500" 200
.625" 250
.750" 300

I suppose you could say increase the Height by 50 for every 1/8" (.125") you increase the depth. Or you could just cheat and always set your heights to 999. If you overset your height there is no problems that I have found.

HandTurnedMaple
02-22-2007, 10:41 AM
((Something seems to be wrong with Edit, so I will have to make a second post here.))

These numbers are not set in stone however. All of my handmade patterns follow the chart. But my VA3D elk can gain as much as height=500 on a .500" depth. If you have concerns, use Rotate Tool to look down the surface of the board and judge that way.

Poppie
02-22-2007, 06:16 PM
Thanks all, especialy matty the corrections you made look great. It's carving as I type.

Dale
Poppie