Need some help with a file

[faustomatic (Joe Graziano)]

I bought a Nomad 883 Pro last year and it’s mostly been sitting because I haven’t had a project for it yet. I have an Epilog 40w laser and a manual mill/lathe combo that both see more use. Well, now I have a project lol. I need to engrave some aluminum for a wax stamp. I’m seriously rusty with my CNC skills and I’m looking for some advice on using the carbide 3D software to set this up. I converted the file to an SVG and resized it etc and brought it into Carbide Create, added a circular border to it so that when you press it into the wax, you get the client’s initials and circular border. And that’s when I realized that the tool paths are all going to carve the two circles and the letters. I am having trouble figuring out how to invert this. I want to mill the background and leave a circular wall .050" thick around the raised letters. Right now if I cut it I’ll get two circle paths .050" apart and engraved letters in a flat surface. I attached an image of the laser cut ones to show what I want. What I’d get with the file as it is would be inverted…raised background. Any help would be great.

Image of the laser cut piece is what I need, and the nomad file (so far) is where I’m at. I’m probably missing something stupid to invert what I want carved.

MARTIN CNC ENGRAVE.c2d (822.0 KB)

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

If you assign an Advanced V carving it seems to work:

If you need more space around replace the outer circle with a rectangle:

[faustomatic (Joe Graziano)]

Okay, cool…thank you. That gets me going in the right direction. Now how do I get it to mill all that surface inside the circle down to the same level?

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

Enabling the pocket clearing option under Advance V carving should do so.

[faustomatic (Joe Graziano)]

Yeah, I found it…was hoping you’d say that LOL! I’m going to dry run it later and then maybe test it on some scrap Renshape before doing a metal one.

[fenrus (Arjan van de Ven)]

to invert the pockets etc… just draw a box or circle around it all and include it in the operation

carbide create uses the odd/even algorithm to decide what to cut: draw a line from left to rights mentally and count how many lines you cross. if it’s zero or even, cc will not cut that bit. if it’s odd numbered then it will cut that area.

so if you want to invert the cut… just add one to that count by adding an outer box or circle

[faustomatic (Joe Graziano)]

Thanks! That’s a useful rule of thumb to remember how to do this. I’m new to the programming side of this and I haven’t touched it in over a year now so I’m trying to remember what little I knew. I’m used to CNC mill set up and run and some G Code editing but never really programed from scratch before.