I am about to start my first tiling project and have to admit I’m a little nervous as it needs precision, I am utilizing a texture toolpath, with a lot of words across 3 tiles on a 64"x42" HDU sign on my 4’ x 2’ 5 Pro.
I’ve reviewed some of the previous topics about this and they were very informative. I’ve watched Kevin’s 2 videos on it and read @gdon_2003 first tiling project
My main question is:
Are there any changes that have been made to the tiling process inside Carbide Create since these very informative teachings?
Second, any advice stepping into this project?
My first step is to carve @SLCJedi s fence, adjusted for my 5pro 4x2 which he posted here:
I’ve built outfeed tables to fully support both sides of my project. All I have left to do is design the toolpaths, and then go at it.
@SirGariff I’d be doing a couple simple practice runs on cheap material to build confidence in the workflow and confirm the proof of concept.
Maybe make a couple small designs in the tile edge areas and run them through to make sure everything lines up. Then after you’re confident in the process run that expensive HDU.
Oh and one last thing…GoodLuck!!
I was very nervous about tiling at first but it works. I have used it a few times.
Make sure that fence is absolutely parallel to the Y axis and that you have the board positioned tightly against it. Any variation will show as a slight bump at the tile line.
I mark the tile height on the board and the zero for the first tile on the fence. At time to start the second tile slide it forward until the marks align.
Given your design there is no way to avoid the tile line running through text but as long as the board is tight with the fence it should be OK.
Think about your workholding. I put threaded inserts into my fence so that I can clamp the piece on the left side.
I am working on a project in Vectric with some texture stuff and it looks great but man its a lot of vectors/nodes on a 38x84" project and sometimes the software goes out to lunch and I have to kill it. I have had to simplify the pattern to get something that the computer can work with OK.
@Jeffish Thanks for the great input about running the practice runs and the small designs. I will do exactly what you suggested.
@CullenS What great advice! Definitely will be doing that with the marking on the fence.
Yeah, I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes hoping that I could move beyond the texture toolpath screen. Is that normal? The “Finishing Toolpaths” pop up just keeps on cycling. Should I expect to be waiting for a massively extended period of time?
I haven’t tried it in CC.
In Vectric you can do a texture design or a texture toolpath or both.
I was using just the design which creates the vectors and then using a profile toolpath on the line for those vectors. It actually calculated everything fine but whenever I tried to do anything with the vectors afterward including just delete them all it would hang. I simplified the vectors reducing the overall node count and things were better.
I’ve talked about this before…I’ll have to dig up a link.
I put a reference hole, using a drill toolpath in a dead space on the design, in the overlap section at the top of tile ‘n’. I then add that same toolpath as the first step of tile ‘n+1’. So, the first thing the job does when cutting ‘n+1’ is plunge down into the open hole created in ‘n’. This assures that everything is aligned.
If the bit is not headed directly into hole, I feedhold the job, stop it, and zero the gantry on the hole, keeping track of how far off it is. Then I rezero job ‘n+1’, shifting by that delta, then restart the job. It plunges into the hole and away we go - perfectly aligned every time.
It’s a bit of a hassle, but things tend to be a little off and this really helps get by the tiny alignment problems that are unfortunately very visible when you look at the finished piece. This eliminates that.
I would not use the tiling feature and manually tile this. Yes, it involves grouping and moving the objects, or changing your Y zero for each tile. But then you don’t get the split line going through the letters, and each letter is completely cut on one of the tiles.
This is definitely part of my answer and I will be utilizing this method.
After letting my computer run the tool paths (overnight) it ended up saying 11 hours run time on the CNC which will end up being about 15 hours in real time. I’ll be able to split this into much more manageable time segments this way.
Selectively picking which text elements go in which sections would be easy to do if they are in separate job but I don’t know if you can pull that off with the texture. Are the vectors arranged in such a way that you can separate them like that?
Gosh I have always loved the great feedback from this “team of experts” in this community. All of this has been so beneficial.
@GJM by the way…I LOVE your website! The top video with the drawn designs and then the finished pieces…so great, SO GREAT!!! And your wood working is gorgeous! (Sorry for all the exclamation points but holy cow!!!)
Today was a big day…after about a 2 months plus of plugging away at trying to figure out how to tile with textures, I succeeded. Of course it was with immense amount of help from this community.
@SLCJedi fence works GREAT. I checked square and straight and it was dead on.
I utilized @GJM “hole” to adjust and set the tile to be exact was extremely helpful. Actually this really helped ensure my success!
@Tod1d suggestion NOT to use the tile feature was ultimately the route I went…still have stepped into CC pro (though on the test run I just had to see if I could overlap the letters to see if I COULD do it…yes, at least on a small test like this)
@CullenS suggested different text elements in different jobs and that’s what I did. I overlapped the texture and you can’t even tell that it was overlapped, so I will be doing three different “jobs” for this.
@SirGariff Looking great Gary! I cant wait to see the final product.
Totally agree with you on the community help. It never ceases to amaze me that there’s so many people in the community with so much shared knowledge and experience.
Gary, good news!!!
I questioned myself after some thought, wondering how the texture would work out without the tiling feature. I considered using manual tiling for the letters & tiling feature for the texture.
Glad to hear it worked out.
You can never get enough exclamation points 
