We just posted an update to Carbide Create with a rework of the inlay mode. This is a fundamentally different take on how to make inlays, so inlay toolpaths created with the old code will be reset back to a basic Advanced V-carve in this build. You’ll need to reenable the inlay mode and set the new parameters.
You can grab 777 here: Download Carbide Create V7
Here are a few of the test pieces we’ve done with bamboo and walnut (with zero special effort spent in setup or machining):
Some additional suggestions from our testing:
I would recommend making your inlay plug depth about 0.5mm less than the depth of your Advanced V-Carved pocket. That difference in depth is going to be your glue gap. You can probably go smaller with testing, but that’s a safe place to start.
I would also recommend a Top Gap of about 1mm. This is going to be your margin if your pocket is a tad oversized (which it will be if your V-bit doesn’t come to a perfect point), and your plug needs to drop into the pocket a smidgen more.
So “Top Gap” is the same as the old “Bottom Gap”, and “Plug Depth” is the same as the old (Max Depth - Bottom Gap)??
A typical Inlay will consist of a Female (No Inlay Mode) and a Male using the new parameters.
The vector for the male will be traced at the Plug Depth, and will still honor depth of cut from the tool.
Are there any other changes to the toolpath?
Correct
The toolpath is different than what we did in prior versions. The inlay will fit and it more closely follows the method that people have been using for V-carve inlays for years.
I’d like to make a suggestion for the ‘Inlay Mode’ - add an option to ‘automatically’ mirror the output.
That would allow the use of the exact same vectors for both the male and female side - less opportunity to mess up while developing the inlay, and it also makes it easier to have both the male and female toolpaths in one file - since both would use the same vectors, you don’t have to mess with layers for the male and female vectors.
In the editing mode, ‘Mirror’ basically does it ‘in place’. If inlay mode did the same, I think it would work as expected.
We’ve talked about that. If we gain confidence that adding a mirror mode would reduce support rather than increase it, we’ll do it.
We will have a new video and (hopefully) some docs to make the process more clear for noobs.
I have myself forgotten to mirror. However, what do you mirror around and how should that be aligned to stock origin etc? The more I their about it the less trivial it seems.
Usually the inlays are kind of “self contained” so we could mirror them about their center, and even add an offset boundary. I’m not sure we wouldn’t be opening a new can of worms though.
The mirroring matches the orientation which one wishes to flip the positive inlay along when rotating it to the recess.
It’s pretty straight-forward — I’m re-creating a slightly modified version of my first inlay:
only with the added inset to make things clearer:
inlay example_v777.c2d (72 KB)
which uses the geometry:
and toolpath settings:
and for the inlay it is:
inlay example — mirrored inlay_v777_6_35_center.c2d (96 KB)
Cutting is going well:
(note that I switched off “Cut Pockets First” above)
Next up is cleaning up the two parts and then the glueup — hopefully it will go as well as the first version.
The CC mirror command looks like it creates a bounding box for the vectors, then flips left-to-right about the center of the bounding box.
I would expect a ‘Mirror option’ to behave identically. This preserves the relationship of the vector to the origin (or at least, the relationship of the bounding box of the vector, to the origin).
I keep hoping for rest machining in advanced Vcarve. It could improve the speed and finish quality considerably, and would not be particularly complicated to implement.
This is my FIRST ever attempt at an inlay. The new mechanism seems to work very well. The only ‘special’ thing I did was I used a down-shear 60 deg bit instead of the usual 60 deg geometry. The inlay is about 5"x4.5".
Ignore the hole in the center, that’s a problem with CM.
A silhouette of a Welsh Terrier:
Close-up around the head. The fit wasn’t noticeably different anywhere around the inlay.
Cross section view. Total thickness is 9mm. I had settings for a 0.5mm glue gap, but ended up being closer to 1mm. Didn’t seem to affect anything else:
Cross section of an area that wasn’t full depth:
Thanks for the test- that looks great.
Hey all,
I threw down a test yesterday into this morning. Those following along on IG saw it come to life.
It was a success with an all “narrow art” file.
With the appropriate strategy I think the tiny side text could also be inlayed. This would involve using a #502 PCB Mill.
Random Notes:
I did an inlay recently (before this new mode) and it seemed to me that there should be a way to come up with a formula for the minimum width between vectors given the tool geometry and depth of cut / glue gap etc…
I have not seen it talked about before though so maybe I am oversimplifying it.
It took me several tries adjusting the vectors to get something that worked properly.
For mine, finishing required cleaning up and separating the inlay:
then gluing things up:
then clearing the pocket:
inlay example — clearing_v777_4_9_center.c2d (44 KB)
Unfortunately, part of gluing things up includes selecting an appropriate glue and waiting sufficiently long enough for it to cure — as much as I like using hide glue, this probably is not a suitable application for this, and I would suggest using some other adhesive.
Winston just posted this video to help walk new users through the inlay process:
I just saw that CC added a “top gap” to the new inlay feature. Great job! I got serious brain trauma from trying to figure out the multiple steps needed to do inlay with the previous version without inlay.
Has anyone done any inlay testing on their own?
This was a late change to V7, and we’re eager to start working on bigger changes that will necessitate a change to the file format. Once that happens, we’re working on V8 and there won’t be any changes to V7. We’d love to get more feedback on the inlay code before we burn those ships.
