Still pretty new to all this and seem to be spending most of my time trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong.
My goal is to simply take one of the designs from the Shapeoko library, like the compass, or a flag/writing and etch/engrave it onto a piece of wood. I don’t know if my issue is with the bit I’m trying to use or if I’m going too deep, or too soft of of wood, or what. What I can say is they all end up looking terrible and all tore up, killing all of the detail.
I have tried using a SpeTool 30, 45, and 60 degree bits. The 60 and 45 are listed as end mills while the 30 shows V on the label.
I have tried lowering and increasing feed and speed rates from the recommended and that hasn’t helped.
I have also tried .5mm depth down to .1mm depth and still things look pretty bad.
Any direction / help here would be much apprecited. If there is a video or tutorial/instructions someone is aware of, I’m happy to go review that.
Not strickly but engraving is etching on metal. On wood you can call it engraving but typically you use vcarve or advanced vcarve tool paths. Both engraving and vcarving uses 90/45/30/20/15 degree vee bits. So for larger designs the 90/45 degree vee bits work well. For small or finer lines the 30/20/15 degree vee bits work better. If you have a fine line project that is small a 90/45 degree vee bit will barely scratch the surface where a 30/20/15 degree will actually product a visible cut. So after creating a tool path look at the simulation and if the carving is very faint try a steeper angle bit.
A simple vcarve the vee bit goes down the center of line/lines until both sides are touched. You typically use maximum depth of bottom of material for a simple vcarve. Just be careful because using bottom of material on thin material can cut right thorugh the material. If in the simulation at the bottom of your letters the simulation looks white that is likely cutting right through the material. In a case that you need to limit depth then you use advanced vcarve. On advanced vcarve you use a flat end mill to carve any flat areas and then the vee bit goes around the perimeter of lines/letters. If any flat area is too small for the flat end mill to get into then the vee bit does the clearing. On advanced vcarve you can limit depth of cut. On a simple vcarve if you limit the depth of cut then the carving can look distorted.
So C3D makes the #301 (90 degree) and the #302 (45 Degree) vee cutters and the 5** bits that are also 90 and 45 degree which are designeated as engravers but the both do the same thing. The steeper bits are available from a lot of vendors and you would need to make a custom tool for those non C3D bits. C3D also has some diamond engravers and are typically used on metal but can be used for some other materials like ceramic tile, glass and other hard surfaces.