I’m a newbie, been following along with the community for a few months now and this is my first post. So far I’ve just done v-carving letters and and simple designs so far but now and I’ve been asked to make somebody the Fireball Whiskey logo in hardwood - basically they want the lettering curved above with the dragon below.
My question is how you would approach this design w. regards to toolpaths?
I think I would pocket out the lettering, but that still is a bit tricky in that the lettering is very square in the corners of the letters. The dragon itself has some detail that wouldn’t work with pocketing? I was thinking doing a contour with a v-bit and leave it at that? I ran a contour toolpath with a 1/8" mill, and it’s too wide for the detail in the dragon.
I’m really open to any suggestions from this amazing community.
Thanks Will - I haven’t tried Advanced V-carving yet, I’ll investigate it tonight.
Question: will the process handle the inner lines (eg. chest muscle/thigh muscle), will those be left as raised elements in the carve? I assume I’m carving out the larger “red” area of the body, and leaving the white lines.
Alternatively, if you surrounded the whole object with a square, and then selected everything for the Advanced VCarve, it would invert things such that the letters and devil were raised, proud to the surface.
I gave this a go a few minutes ago (I had a CC failure trying to help someone else out and thought I’d practice ) and, if you don’t actually have the svg for the above, the image traces very well in CC and you should have your toolpath in very short order.
Which is raised and which lowered depends on “Figure Ground Reversal” and how any outlines there are — if you want to reverse what is raised/lowered, add geometry around things or remove one level:
Thanks - agree on easy tracing - I’ve already converted to svg and was able to play with toolpaths - but then got kind of lost with how to do it so it looks good.
I’m doing this on a whiskey barrel lid - so I’m not sure if inverting the carve by adding a square would work - but I understand that concept and will give it some thought.
You can add a circle instead of a square I just tried it and it looks nice either way.
I only went 1/8" or 1/16" deep. If you make the circle larger than your barrel lid, it will machine the entire lid, except for the logo. If the lid is currently distressed / a little rough, that might look nice.
That looks really nice, Erik. Oak has some really nice grain, and the weathered surface is cool.
I do see some cutter marks… get busy with the sandpaper!!
It would be really cool if we could do a zig-zag pocket & specify an angle to go with the grain.
) and, if you don’t actually have the svg for the above, the image traces very well in CC and you should have your toolpath in very short order.
I just tried it and it looks nice either way.