Hey all. I just finished a build of the latest version of the XXL with the Z-Plus upgrade. The Z-Plus is BEEFY! Holy cow! I wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy. To be fair, I haven’t held the original Z, but this new one has got to be 15-20 LBS.
The build went pretty much flawlessly. The quality of materials and things are amazing. I have yet to power it on, but I’m so excited to get using this. Again, I just wanted to throw up a quick post in case anyone had any questions about the new upgrades.
Welcome @bikerdan, enjoy those first few weeks with the machine!
Make sure all your eccentrics and belts (well, the remaining ones, X and Y) are nice and tight, then show us your first cuts / your machine !
One quick question while we’re looking at my first cuts… I did an Avengers logo for my other son and the carving came out a little jaggety… I thought maybe it was the CNC but it looks like the simulation shows the same anomalies. Any ideas? The SVG is just above
Ok. I think I get it. So I would just bring in an offset just far enough to get the depth I want, then use an end mill to pocket the insides. Cool. I’ve already learned a ton today! Thanks for the help!!!
We’ve also got a new VCarve toolapth almost done that allows you to cut to a fixed depth and then use a different tool to cut the inside area flat. I think this will probably give you more of the effect you’re looking for.
Look for it in the next few days if testing goes well.
That would end up with an odd stepped / faceted appearance — not seeing it as attractive at all.
Moreover, this points up the limitation of machine V carving as opposed to traditional stone carving where the angle of the cut can be continuously changed so as to achieve a uniform depth (this depending on the viewing angle and specific shadow appearance desired, see books by Fra. Edward Catich and Michael Harvey — the latter’s Creative Lettering Today is back in print and back down to a reasonable price).
But… once Carbide Create has this option to do a “max depth” vcarve as @robr implied… then if the normal vcarve path becomes a “series of max depth at the tool max depth of cut” cuts, this “little ridge at the places where the path is wider than the tool” goes away, and Carbide Create can cut at any arbitrary depth at that point, independent of tool diameter
Only if the geometry is worked out and the cut thus made — the math for that is complex, and the tooling time long to even begin to approximate the surface resulting from a sharp chisel skillfully applied.
(Yeah, I’m still kicking myself for taking the stupid “Web” design class rather than the sculping class in college)
It seems if you were really serious about getting a complete vcarve, you could start with a v bit trace of an inset, then use the same bit to vcarve the inside of the line that was previously vcarve at the next depth… Does that make sense?
makes total sense, it was what I was trying to get across just your words are nicer
my own hobby software project does this. Will I think has some geometry in mind where this does not work, and I’m getting very curious about that, and would love to see what that is and play with it…
