Originally Posted by
luckettg
Dick, I just took a picture of the carving I did yesterday, and a screen shot of the Designer depiction of what it should look like. It is using the 1/16 ball nose bit, which Designer allows to be chosen. I am not yet sure why it turned out this way, but I like the idea of using other bits. I have used end mill bits to cut out letters too, and that worked pretty good. I like the ball nose bits for the smaller size lettering. This is the first time I tried it while using Conforming Vectors.
In Designer I read that using the 1/16" ballnose bit for your text the depth will be .017". If you used the 60 degree V bit instead the depth would be .067" - almost 4 times deeper. Of course that would be much more tolerant of any board movement, if that is what is happening here. Personally, I would be using the 60 degree V bit for that text and actually any small lettering. It will cut significantly deeper than the ballnose bit. But if you want to stick to the ballnose bit I would make sure that the board is not moving and stays under the rollers. That is a possible cause of this problem.
I think I will try a couple of test carves with a portion of your mpc myself and see what results I get.
If you're not using a sled, I highly recommend that you do for a number of reasons. I use them on virtually all my projects.
I'm not sure why Designer allows the use of other bits, but this is how Centerline is described by LHR:The Centerline Text Feature adds an additional Rout Mode for the Text Tool feature. This feature uses the 60° and 90° V-groove bits to follow the center of the letters for a clean engraved, v-cut look.