How to do "Prismatic" Lettering

The ability to do this came in as a feature request — basically rather than incising the design as V carving does, carving them proud of the surface:

While one can do this in Carbide Create Pro:

234f41f4244084216bcdcd5f6c7597d6

07b105da7f4a9ec5846ee0283ea666d7

it takes a while to cut them out w/ any degree of verisimilitude using a ball-nosed endmill.

Hang on for how to do it manually.

First consideration is which V endmill will be used, and how proud the letterforms will stand of the stock — we’ll use a 60 degree and 1/4" height:

Draw the centerline for the letter:

to the inside and outside by half the width dimension or so:

Add geometry around the letter:

Select the outer geometry and the centerline and do an Advanced V carving w/ pocket clearing:

Repeat for the inside:

To arrive at:

Draw up geometry which is slightly wider than the width noted above:

so as to make the desired letter:

Once one has arrived at the desired outline:

Inset by a bit less than half the desired width:

Where necessary, offset any inner features to the outside, or if need be, re-draw them:

Select the new centerline geometry and the outer and do an Advanced V carving:

2 Likes

Appreciate the effort here. Prismatic Lettering is a must for me, and although your tutorial works, it’s unfortunate this style of lettering/shaping requires soooo many steps. Carbide: Can you fix this PLEASE
I really don’t want to go to V-CarvePro software.
I usually have a full bed of lettering all needing this and it’s super difficult to achieve with a nested grouping of more than 20 letters.
Any other thoughts? Thanks again :slight_smile:

But once you do, you’ll wish you had done it sooner.

2 Likes

Have you tried the Pro version of Carbide Create via trial license?
The CC Pro modeling features would seem to make prismatic letters simple & straight forward to achieve.

1 Like