Tutorial: V-carving for added detail

When using a round endmill, it is often impossible to cut all details since the endmill diameter will make it impossible to reach into some areas.

One way to address this is to cut said details using a V-carve since the endmill has a potentially zero size.

This project exemplifies these difficulties if one chooses a 1/4" endmill:

as shown in the toolpath window:

The first consideration is how deep one can cut (in this instance the stock material is 1/4" deep) for a given width — one can either do the geometrical calculations to determine this, or draw it up:

which shows that we need to keep things less than 1/2" wide.

Mark the angles on the 2nd picture? Worth noting the angle of your vbit will determine how wide/deep you can go. 90 degree bits are obviously the easiest to calculate.

Good points. Added dimensions and the angle.

Select one of the inner profiles, and select the offset path command:

and set the desired offset:

which will result in:

If need be, create a #301 tool — see: https://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Carbide_Create_V-carving_(advanced)#Tool_creation

Control-click on the original geometry and switch to the Toolpath pane:

click on V Carve and make the appropriate settings:

repeat for all the other paths (using Outside when adding the geometry around the outer profile)

Ultimately it should look like:

(but I would suggest using more toolpaths for efficiency’s sake)

and will preview as:

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