Pocketing the back of a letter

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

So I am trying to make a letter 5 inches tall. the BACK of the letter needs to have a .2 pocket half the width of the letter. Intent is to put LED strips in it to light a clear acrylic duplicate. Backlighting.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure this out.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Steve

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

Upload the file in question and sketches showing how the dimensions relate to the letterforms?

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

address01.c2d (104 KB)

So you see when I selected pocket it thinks its cutting the number out of a solid sheet. I want half the width of the number pocketed as to fit a strip of led lights in it.

Thanks

Steve

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

Select the text:

choose “Offset Vectors”

Inset an amount which will leave a pocket of the desired width.

use that for the pocket operation.

Due to how the thickness of the letterforms vary it would probably be best to just re-draw the centerline of the text and offset to the inside and outside, or inset one edge by the desired width.

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

Perfect ! Thank you

Steve

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

Thank you ! This stuff is fun, if not a little frustrating at times.

Steve

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

This didn’t pan out really well. And I cannot tell the offset with the view thing in carbide motion.
It basically pocketed the letter in the panel. Hmmmmm

Steve

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

Here is the Step-by-Step:

• Draw or inset geometry which follows the center of the letterforms:

Edit using Node editing to adjust the last placed node:

Done

Offset the vectors to the inside and outside by half the desired width:

So, if one wants a 1/8" channel, 1/16" inside and out:

Apply

Repeat for the other letters.

Attached as a half-done v8 file.

address01_v8.c2d (156 KB)

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

Thank you !

I’ll give this a shot!

Appreciate it

Steve

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

Note that this will be a bit more complex for the other letters — probably the best thing to do will be to instead just directly draw the channels:

Done

and then Boolean Union:

OK

Also attached.

address01_v8.c2d (164 KB)

Note that when cutting as a pocket it will be necessary to use a tool smaller than 1/8".

[Steve340 (Steven A Ward)]

See my latest post. In pocketing toolpath there is an offset vector ability. That did the trick !