what patterns to avoid?what woods to favour?

[still_kickin]

Hi y'all,
Longtime reader...first time writer!
Ive been trying to make carvings of calligraphy. Most of them don't come out as clean. At several points in the carving, the wood becomes almost paper-thin. Then as the bit (1/16" carving) makes a subsequent pass, the wider part of the bit just knocks the thin peice out! ive tried changing the carving depth, but this only distorts the design. after several failed attempts im kind of frustrated. when i bought the machine i knew there would be limitations in its capabilities, can someone please point these out from ur past expeiences? is there a certain way i should import images? has anyone tried the CarveBetter Pattern Editor? does that yield better results? Should i use different bits? Wat patterns should i avoid? or does this have something to do with size of carvings? or would softer woods make for better carvings?
Also what kind of life can i expect from the bits? will i have to invest in a bit sharpening tool? kinda strapped for cash!
thnx for all y'all time.
Honest aBe.
Knowlwdge from Cradle to the Grave.

[Kenm810]

still kickin,

May I welcome you to the forum,
some of us through trial and error have found some fonts carve much better then others,
plus a little space between the letters or numbers (15 to 20) in the text set up helps a ton.
Most agree that Centerline text with the 60 0r 90 Degree bit work best on hard tight grained woods,
like hard maple or cherry. A quick search on this forum on woods to carve will list many more.
As far as sharpening Bits, even though I've bought additional Bits,
I'm still carving with my original Bits that came with the machine.
Most folks break them through operator error or dropping them long before dulling them.
Others I'm sure will add more info and input.

Again Welcome

[Jeff_Birt]

Welcome still_kickin.

You have discovered one of the major drawback with text on the machine at this time, namely chip out. As you deduced, due to the taper of the carving bit, it makes full contact with the wood in each pass. Using only Designer there is no way around this. As Ken mentioned some fonts work better than others and limiting the height of the letters will help.

Another way to do it is to lay the text out in another graphics program, like CorelDraw, etc. You can then place a gradient around the letters edge which when imported as a pattern into Designer will give the edges a slight bevel. Jon Jantz does a great job of covering this technique using CorelDraw in his address sign tutorial: http://allcw.com/Tutorials.html. ArtCAM has a great feature that will apply a draft (slope) to your entire relief (pattern). While it works great, ArtCAM being $8,000 is out of most of our price ranges (it's out of mine for sure).

The built in image->pattern importer in Designer is limited to the size/resolution of pattern it will produce (around 512x512 pixels). If you have a scanning probe and its software it will produce patterns of much larger size/resolution. CBPE will produce patterns of any size. Designer however has a limitation of about 750K for the size of patterns.

Hope that helps...