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Thread: What I see in Designer, is Not what I Get...

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
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    Round Lake, IL
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    17

    Default What I see in Designer, is Not what I Get...

    I received my machine last week and after carving out a couple of quick signs of my kids' names in Pine, I decided to try something a little more involved. I live the Chicago area and given the current status of the Bears, I opted to try to come up with a nice Bears sign to show off at work among all of the bandwagon fans.

    I imported a bears logo into Designer. I placed the logo, the word Bears in large letters and the words NFC Champions in smaller letters, into a recessed carved oval. In Designer it looked great; the detail of the logo was also coming through quite nicely. I set the bit optimization to Best. Uploaded the design to the memory card using the High quality setting. I then pulled out a nice piece of 0.5" Oak and let the machine carve away.

    The photos below show the results. The detail of the logo was horrible. Most all of the smaller text letters were chipped away. I purposely used Oak to have the design look much nicer and to prevent chipping.

    I can somewhat understand the smaller text breaking. However, seeing the detail that others have received doing different carvings, I didn't think I was asking too much. Plus, I kept the depth of the smaller text shallow on purpose to prevent the wood from breaking away. The bigger disappointment was the look of the logo. What I saw in Designer, is Not what I got from the machine...

    I have attached my design and 4 photos to ask for your help. The first three photos show the original sign. The last photo shows part of the sign redesigned with 'rounder' small text (to try to prevent breaking of the text). Notice two things in the last photo. 1) the smaller text still chipped away. 2) The sign is not finished - I received a Z Axis Stall error and the machine shut down. (It's currently on its way back to Texas for service, since troubleshooting with Chris in support couldn't get it running again.)

    I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions that you can provide, such that when I get the machine back, I can be better prepared to produce a nicer sign.

    Thanks in advance!
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails img_0238_edited_1_184.jpg   img_0239_edited_1_136.jpg   img_0240_edited_1_525.jpg   img_0241_edited_1_188.jpg  

    Attached Files Attached Files

  2. #2

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    Can you post the original picture of the Bear that you imported into designer. Most, if not all the time when one inports a pic it has to be worked on in another type porgram(corel, photoshop) very few pics in my experience can be imported directly into designer and obtain sastisfactory results.

    Bob

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    Rolla, Missouri
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    3,419

    Default

    Do some searching on the forum regarding importing logos/images into Designer. Jon Jantz did a great video tutorial on how to use CorelDraw to do this. In short, Designer uses shades of grey in the imported images as depth information. So you have to work with a logo to get the shading set correct so it will carve nice.

    Really thin text of any height will not carve worth a hoot (tried that on my first real carving too). Think of how thin those areas are and how much pressure the machine exerts as it moves the bit through the wood.

    Sometimes, as you have seen, things will look diffrent in Designer than when they are actaully carved. One of those situations is thin area chip out, another is when you have something that really stands proud of the surface (and has vertical edges). Designer does not account for the taper in the carving bit (yet) which can lead to the edges being a bit chewed up.

    I have just kept text down to a reasonable height and kept away from really thin fonts. Others use external programs to create text with a taper to it which also helps a lot.
    Happy carving , Jeff Birt

    Check out www.soigeneris.com for CarveWright Accesories.

    Home of the 'Carving in the Dark' back lit LCD kit!

  4. #4
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    Jan 2007
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    Emmett, ID
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    I've posted many times that oak is too open-grained to get good carving results. Its good for recessed lettering signs, but anything raised on oak has a high risk of chip-out. Further that, the small lettering is too small as this machine moves side-to-side very fast. Especially on oak.

    This is part of the learning curve of the machine. All I can say is chalk it up to experience and learning.

  5. #5
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    Jan 2007
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    Round Lake, IL
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    Thank you for the comments thus far!

    Attached is the logo that I used. I have done some graphics work and understand the machine uses shades of grey for depth. However, when I uploaded the graphic and saw what it looked like in Designer, it didn't 'appear' that I needed to do anything else with it. It looked like it was going to turn out quite nice.

    HandTurnedMaple - I would appreciate some suggestions on tighter grained wood you recommend to get better carving results.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails bears_logo_405.gif  

  6. #6
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    Jan 2007
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    Emmett, ID
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    Quote Originally Posted by pruitts
    HandTurnedMaple - I would appreciate some suggestions on tighter grained wood you recommend to get better carving results.
    Still working on that. I have a cherry board that I have seen recommended here. But I want to make sure the patterns are perfect before I throw it in. Sometime in the next 2-3 days though. What I have used: basswood carves good, but extremely fuzzy finish that must be worked off, hard maple carves great with only some fuzz. Other people have posted their wood choices in the Techniques forum too.

  7. #7
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    I curious, what size is the logo in your finished product?

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    Richmond, Virginia
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    Since I've had a lot of experience in the past year of oak chipping quite a bit, I haven't tried to do very small letters with my signs. This is on a piece of 10" X 16" cherry. I do plan on a more detailed sign after the Bears win on Sunday, only because my brother is a Colts fan, and I will send it to him for his den. I used the same logo on my sign and had some chipping also. I had taken it to Photoshop and cleaned it up some. But since I was going to paint it anyway, I was satisfied for the first try. I will work on a more improved logo later. I'd love some of you experts to redo the logo and post it in the design sharing thread. Here's the sign I posted in another thread. No one's giving us any hope for Sunday, but I believe. Keep the faith. DA BEARS!
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails img_5530_882.jpg  
    Using Version 1.125

  9. #9
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    Jan 2007
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    Here's what I get just importing the way it is. But notice how thin the eyes are. This will never survive carving on any wood.

    NOTE: My help on this project should not in anyway be construed as support for the Bears or the Bears organization.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails bear_logo_designed_109.jpg  

  10. #10
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    Round Lake, IL
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    Ron - Nice sign! Thanks for sharing. Painting would be an option, I was hoping for the natural wood though.

    Perhaps I need to enlarge the graphic to allow the bit some room to work.

    I was a little disappointed after seeing the detail in other small carvings.

    HandTurnedMaple - The graphic is just shy of being 2" square.

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