I am trying to do Raised lettering by removing the majority of the material about a 1/4 inch deep. I am trying to use a 1/4 end mill for the roughing pass and a 1/16 to finish the detail around the text but because there is are sections smaller then the 1/4 but farther from the text edges I am getting left over material. The carbide create doesn’t really understand that it has all ready cut a section and doesn’t need to cut in an area again. I don’t want to run a second pocket path with a smaller bit to clean up the few areas. Ideas? The pics I have included show the project layout, the issue with the highlighted uncut pieces and the last one is if I run a full pocket with the 1/16 bit(3+hours). The system isn’t smart enough to know that a section is already gone based on a previous tool path? Preformatted text
“Rest Machining” is what you are looking for, and CC doesn’t have it.
But, you can speed up the process with a few tricks.
Select your text, and do ‘Offset Vectors’ with an amount just over the width of your larger endmill, say about .27 inches in this case (or 6.5mm if metric). Now select both the text and the new curve, and run a pocket operation with the smaller bit.
Edit: Now that I think about it, I think the offset can be 1/2 the width of the larger endmill (plus a little bit), so try something like .13".
This should run the smaller bit in all areas that are ‘near’ the text. It’s more than the minimum needed, but way less than re-cutting everything.
The other thing you could try is to step down at most 1/2 the diameter of the previous bit, so in this case 1/4 → 1/8 → 1/16. Run a pocket for the first to clear out most of the material, then for each of the remaining do an outside contour cut.
Mhotchin,
Thanks for the response. I am trying to understand your suggestion. I saw a youtube video were someone used the ‘Offset Vectors’ but he said to offset the smallest amount possible like .0001 or something like that. But i wasn’t sure why or what it would do. Do I do an inside or outside offset direction? I guess I don’t know what I am trying to trick it into doing so i don’t know which way to offset?
Edit: OK I did a outside offset then an inside/left contour is that right?
Thanks
The smallest offset is used when unioning together geometry, usually script lettering.
As noted above, you would want to use the radius (half the diameter) of each endmill you are using.
That said, Advanced V carving handles this sort of thing automatically:
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.