Metal scrollwork engraving Nomad 3

[gunter511 (Gunter)]

Hi All,

I have an upcoming project to engrave brass with a scrollwork design similar to the image below:

Does anyone have experience with this?

I’m trying to achieve various depths within the same design and am unclear how I would do that -
would I use Carbide Create Toolpaths Vcarve, Advance Vcarve or some other option?

Most of the information available is for doing this in wood which is completely different. Could anyone shed some light on how to achieve this in metal on the Nomad?

Many thanks in advance,
Gunter

[AndyP (Andy)]

What inputs do you have: image, vector drawing, 3d model (obj, stl)…?

What are the finished dimensions?

Then we can think through the options.

[gunter511 (Gunter)]

Hey Andy,

Thanks for your reply!

The file is an eps vector file. The dimensions would be about 1.5cm, so small.

I tried to upload the eps file but it appears greyed out. Below is a link to the file:

Google Drive: Sign-in

Many thanks in advance for your help!
Gunter

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

The design opens in Serif’s Affinity Designer:

and is made up of what look to be well-formed outlines:

Exporting to SVG yields a warning:

Selecting Open Vectors:

Yields one item which it should be okay to delete.

Like most designs, this yields the issue of “Figure-ground reversal”:

Figure ground reversal

This came in from support difficulty in getting a purchased image: [image] to cut as desired. We will review the specifics here.

Figure-ground reversal and toolpath considerations

As requested on support… Given a traced image: [image] which has a pocket toolpath which previews as: [image] One can ungroup it: [image] [image] Select only the outer geometry: [image] and delete it (or move it to a different layer) to get a different appearance: [image] [image] [image] Ok Then associate the inner geometry with the toolpath: [image] [image] “Use current selection” Ok [image] Because the geometry has sharp corners, one can get more detail using an…

Note that the dimensions are a bit off:

So scaling up to match the original:

The most expedient way to invert the design is to just offset to the outside:

Deselect what one wishes to keep:

and delete the extraneous geometry:

At this point it would work to assign a V carving toolpath:

If the tooling and toolpaths for that would be suitable for the material which is being cut…

but my experience is that trying to V carve metal results in a lot of broken tooling — perhaps @wmoy will have a suggestion/solution — one thing to consider is modeling it in 3D and then cutting using suitable tooling.

[gunter511 (Gunter)]

Hey Will,

I just moved to Affinity Designer after the whole Adobe thing - I’m sure I’m not alone!

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. This does seem quite challenging and I’m also worried about tool breakages. Advanced Vcarve though, will cut out a lot of metal all around which is not what I need, I’d like this to be an engraving with reliefs showing only in the engraving itself.

@wmoy Please could I ask you for your input?

Many thanks,
Gunter

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

The notable difference betwixt V carving and Advanced V carving is that the former cuts along the center, and depends on depth to achieve a given width, while for Advanced V carving, it cuts along the perimeter and if the Pocket Clearing option is enabled will clear the area in-between.

V carving will result in a variation in depth, but note that it will have a consistent angle/slope unlike the continual variation of handwork.

[QCDvacuum (Jeff Cable)]

@gunter511

I just moved to Affinity Designer after the whole Adobe thing

One quick and dirty potential solution to vector import warnings is to use Affinity Designer to export the image to a PNG file. CC has a trace image button for PNG, BMP or JPEG files. Press it and then you can trace the file. The trace option is very effective and it is a really useful intermediary step to producing files that can be manipulated and carved without import warnings.