I’m trying to make a little carved bowl from Fine Woodworking which has some chip carving on it. Engrave (v-carving) does a surprisingly nice job of looking like chip carving. The problem I have is that the surface is curved, and curve enough so that at some point the bit doesn’t enter the wood. The model looks like this:
(Here the artwork is just embossed into the surface - it looks much nicer V-carved). On a flat surface it engraves nicely, but on the curved surface as it drops further and further away from the artwork plane the carving gets shallower and shallower until finally features don’t show up at all. (It flat out won’t let you selected contours on the curved surface).
Some googling led me to hope that “Pencil” might do what I want, but it requires a ball-end, not a v-bit, so I wouldn’t be able to get the crips corners I would like, also the varying depth is a good part of the effect.
Does anyone have an easy solution for this? I could make a construction plane along the long axis of each “leaf” and manually make the v-carve path (I think a 3-point arc in depth below the surface would do it), which would work I think but would be a PITA (but probably would have saved a lot of time over trying to get engrave and pencil to work).
Hmmm, let me see if I understand what you are doing since I don’t know CC Pro.
In design (not CAM) space you:
Create (with math, say a cylinder section) or import (e.g., an STL) a “compnonent” that is the final stock shape. Here (screenshot #1) it looks like this is some kind of dome.
You model the idealized inverse (protrusion, not sloped trench) of the Vcarve on a flat surface by extruding the closed contours of the artwork (letters here) up at a draft angle that corresponds to the bit you will be using (45 degrees = 90 degree V bit).
You then subtract the height of the protrusion at each point above its flat base from the actual height of the curved surface below it at the same point (with some height offsetting).
I assume you would then in Toolpath/Manufacturing space use “normal” 3D tool paths to clear out the VCarve (like) trenches after first making the dome, using rest machining? Would you be able to actually use a 45 degree Vbit (i.e., zero radius) for these tool paths?
I think in fusion you can’t directly subtract (via combine) the height offset from a flat surface from the curved surface. But what I think you could do in principle is cut extrude with a draft angle the artwork projected to the curved surface. I think in principle this is the same thing, whether it works in practice … I’ll experiment!
(Thanks so much for the input. I’m super-impressed by the attention you give the community. It must get tiresome answering the same questions over and over.)
There is a couple of ways to achieve this in Fusion. If you’re using the parallel tool with a TBN to achieve the curved surface, include the chip cutouts and machine all at once and it will follow everything on the model, but will leave lines of the step over and not leave clean edges around the points.
If you already cut the profile and wanted to machine the chips, the pencil tool will work with a V-Bit, you just have to change your tool parameters in the tool library. The tip diameter cannot be 0, change it to .005 and the V-bit tool will work when using the Pencil tool.
Just know, the pencil tool with machine the entire cutout as it relates to the top surface, so it wont leave those nice bottoms of the pocket.
If you share the file I can generate a couple of options.
I would love it if you could look at my file! It’s based on copyrighted FWW material so I’m not sure of the propriety of uploading it publicly, so I’ll send you a link in a private message. Thanks so much.
I’ve been trying to custom carve/engrave skateboard decks for years. Building the 3D model is maybe 20% of the job. The setup and machining are when you’ll really have some fun! Good Luck!
