First Carving

[JuicyCarp]

Good evening!

My machine has not shown up yet I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will show up tomorrow while I am at work, the antiipation is like waiting for an unborn child! Anyways, I have been playing around with the software, and put together my first carving project. I wanted to do something simple that will allow me to explore a few features of the program, but nothing too technical or complex. This carving will be made to go on my door at work, replacing the ever so classy dry erase board held up by thumb tacs! If someone has a few minutes, I would appreciate it if they would take a look at my pattern and see if it is machine ready, and see if i missed anything that might cause me an issue during carving. Additionally there was only one issue that I was unable to figure out by searching through the forum, that is the cut tabs. I went through the menu options to add them, but they do not show up on the pattern in the software, so I am a bit worried about that. Do they show up in the designer?


office door.mpc

[eelamb]

Looks like it should turn out great.

[dltccf]

Good evening!

My machine has not shown up yet I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will show up tomorrow while I am at work, the antiipation is like waiting for an unborn child! Anyways, I have been playing around with the software, and put together my first carving project. I wanted to do something simple that will allow me to explore a few features of the program, but nothing too technical or complex. This carving will be made to go on my door at work, replacing the ever so classy dry erase board held up by thumb tacs! If someone has a few minutes, I would appreciate it if they would take a look at my pattern and see if it is machine ready, and see if i missed anything that might cause me an issue during carving. Additionally there was only one issue that I was unable to figure out by searching through the forum, that is the cut tabs. I went through the menu options to add them, but they do not show up on the pattern in the software, so I am a bit worried about that. Do they show up in the designer?


office door.mpc

The tabs will be there but don't show up in designer, however I wouldn't bother with a cut path that close to your edge. I would eliminate the cut path and then just cut off the ends with your table saw. With a table saw cutting off the ends takes about 30 seconds, where that cut path will take 20 minutes to complete on the carvewright if you used .25 max depth.

Also, with thin letters like that it can be a good idea to add a small or medium draft to them to keep the wood from chipping where it is thin.

dave

[eelamb]

Dave is right on both. On the cut path, save the machine, do it on the table saw.

[badbert]

The only problem I see, is not really a problem. You changed the depth of the text to get the effect you wanted. I get much better results ,on raised letters if I make them the depth of the carve region, and then adjust the height. This gives the draft option a better chance of preventing break out. And I would add small draft to the the large words, and medium draft for the "do not enter".

[mtylerfl]

Good evening!

My machine has not shown up yet I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will show up tomorrow while I am at work, the antiipation is like waiting for an unborn child! Anyways, I have been playing around with the software, and put together my first carving project. I wanted to do something simple that will allow me to explore a few features of the program, but nothing too technical or complex. This carving will be made to go on my door at work, replacing the ever so classy dry erase board held up by thumb tacs! If someone has a few minutes, I would appreciate it if they would take a look at my pattern and see if it is machine ready, and see if i missed anything that might cause me an issue during carving. Additionally there was only one issue that I was unable to figure out by searching through the forum, that is the cut tabs. I went through the menu options to add them, but they do not show up on the pattern in the software, so I am a bit worried about that. Do they show up in the designer?

Hello,

There were a number of things that I revised/changed in order to assure your success with this project. DISCLAIMER: That's not to say that everything was particularly REQUIRED, or that this is the so-called "only correct way" to do this, but drawing from many years of experience, I revised your project the way I would do it myself.

Starting out, it's tough to judge and adjust a design to avoid wood chipout issues, practical depths of carves, when to use Draft and Feathering, etc. Hopefully, this will help give you a head start so that you can apply some of these principles to your future projects. Most of us have to learn from the school of hard knocks, ruin a couple projects and so on, until we get the 'feel' for CNC-bound design layouts that will machine well. Some of the changes made were under the assumption that you are NOT using any special sled or jig for this project. Here are some of the changes made and why...

1) The Cut Path was too close to the top edge of the board...it would run, but you may not yield a clean cut at that top edge. Leaving at least 0.5" clearance from the top edge is good practice. I changed the size of your layout to fit on a design area of 7" x 16.5". The board you put into your machine needs to be 24" long to allow for the extra 7" required for the board to stay captive under both compression rollers at all times. (Some folks design their layouts to include the extra board length...I never do that unless making a layout for a jig or sled, in which case I design at the exact jig size, of course.) It's more sensible to me personally to design the layout as I did here, when using just a plain board, and all you have to remember is the board put into the machine will always be cut to a length just a tad over 7" longer than your design layout.

2) None of the Lettering had any Draft assigned. A Small Draft setting was applied to all Lettering. The Small Draft is 7-degrees...exactly equal to the angle of the Carving Bit. Draft was a feature I requested many years ago specifically to help Serif Lettering from chipping out on the thin serifs.

3) The Carve Region was 0.5" deep...this is probably way too deep. I changed it to 0.187" deep, which may not sound like enough, but you will be very surprised at how the exact same effect is achieved using shallower depths for a nice looking sign like this. Try it, you'll see! It's easier on the machine as well. General Rule...use the least amount of Depth possible to achieve the resulting 'look' you desire.

4) The small Text was raised much too far from the floor of the Carve Region. This invites chipout and the edge of the tapered Carving Bit to "chew" into the sidewalls of the letters (although the Draft helps against this too). In any case, I lowered the Height of the small text from 100 down to 20. Again, intuitively, this may not sound like enough height left but it will be.

5) I applied a 0.125" inside Feather to the Carve Region. Besides being asthetically appealing, it prevents the tapered Carving Bit from "gouging" the region's sidewalls (similar to the Draft setting benefits).

6) All the Lettering had a 0.25" Feather. This was unnecessary in this design since all letters were sitting inside the Carve Region, so I removed all feathering on the lettering.

7) Oh Yes! I changed your Cut Path settings...tab height to 3/16" and Max Pass Depth to 0.3" per pass...same settings I use on all the Projects of the Month!

EDIT: I also removed the unnecessary 1/16" bit assignment on the Cut Path


I think that's all I changed. I included a screenshot and the Revised MPC for you. I hope it is helpful!

[CNC Carver]

I agree with the updated mpc posted. It should make a very nice sign. Think I should make one for the State police lab.

[lawrence]

Good points by them both- if you have a tablesaw it is simpler and sometimes easier to just cut it there...

I love your layout, it is very nice and is a great looking design. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty to "adjust" the pattern a bit here for ya and will explain what I did.

I raised the main carve region up to .25 from .5. - in this size of sign, .5 is really deep once you actually carve it.

I then lowered the base for all the lettering down to the .25 and used the raise height to change how "deep" the lettering is... it just seems to make the machine happier (carve faster) when I do this

I also gave all the letters a little draft- depending on what type of wood you use, no draft can have disappointing results because thin parts of letters will break out.

Your carve is quite close to the top and bottom edges... it would probably be OK to say "ignore" when the error comes up, but for your first carve I suggest KISS. (I used KISS for my first few and am happy I did!) so I increased your board width by an inch to give the machine rollers at least .5 on the top and bottom to roll on.

Also, you seem to have given yourself 7 inches on each side of the carve- good to follow the 7 inch rule, but it is 7 inches overall (3.5 inches on each side) that you need to keep under the rollers- I shortened your board a bit for ya.

For some reason, your cut path seemed to have a second bit assigned to it... I'm not sure what was going on there, but I got rid of it.

Finally, I gave the carve region a little feather, this also makes for a cleaner carve and can cut down significantly on carve time. (down from 4:55 to 1:40 carve time)

I hope I'm not being in any way patronizing with this post- I'm certainly not meaning to... I just want your first carve to be one that you are happy with and it really is a very nice layout.

I've included both an MPC with my changes and one with my changes plus the cut path removed and the 1/16 carving bit doing a vector path around to give you something to use as a guide for your TS- I hope this has helped and welcome!

Lawrence

[lawrence]

oops, Bert and Michael beat me to it! I'm pleased that we made many of the same suggestions though...



Lawrence

[badbert]

Man can you tell we all want to help the Newbie! LOL That was a triple play! Great job guys!