Sign Process Ideas

[Diesel3368 (Jason Weischedel)]

Happy 4th, all!

This weekend has me working to build a sign for the entranceway to our farmette based on our family logo. My wife and I have two schools of thought on the best way to do this. I plan on making one of each out of MDF to test and see what we like in the end and how difficult each way is. Either way, I get shop signs with our new logo! I am looking for any advice or pitfalls that experienced crafters can share before I spend a ton of CNC time on some tests. You guys are always awesome, so I know I am in the right place!

End goal: Hanging outdoor sign, 32" diameter, engraved wood with color recesses or raised areas.

Option 1: V-Carve the logo into the wood. Seal the wood with Oil-Based Ultimate Spar Urethane, then cover with Oramask 813 and then carve out the details. Seal the pockets, and then paint each area the right colors. Remove Oramask and then give the entire piece a coating of spar to finish it off and seal it all together. Seems straightforward, but I am worried about the machining time and the fine details of the logo not coming out well.

Option 2: Rest machining and leaving the logo raised, while everything else is removed. No panel prep other than being flat. Start with McFly to hog out the big spots, then keep rest machining down to 1/4", 1/8", and finally 1/16th". Seal everything with spray so the paint doesn’t bleed. The raised portions are then painted with correct colors using some kind of small roller or dobber brush. Then, when painted, give the whole thing a coat of spar finish to protect it. My worry here is not being able to paint the raised areas neatly enough and making a mess of a finished glue-up.

I don’t think there is a “right answer” here, but I am looking for any advice on the files I have started, as they are long machine times and the final version will be a small investment. I am also open to suggestions on wood selection and bit choices. I have no problem investing in the proper tooling and supplies!

Thanks all in advance, and let me know if more details are needed.

REST Machining Test.c2d (956 KB)
TSF Logo V-Carve Reverse.c2d (1.1 MB)

[mhotchin (Michael Hotchin)]

For the second version (raised logo), you could try painting first, then removing everything. I’ve done this with downcut bits, it leaves a very clean edge.

You could outline the different parts using a shallow cut, then paint. Might be difficult with how close things are, but that would also be a problem with carve first, paint second.

The design itself needs some fixing, there are several places where your vectors are self-intersecting. This usually leads to weird “Why is it cutting there???” problems. Things like this:

The trace is pretty chunky in places, you may not be happy with how it cuts. For example, compare the ‘S’ from stable:

If this is a trace that CC did, you should report this trace as a bug report - the CC Trace feature should never output self-intersecting curves.

Most of the self intersections are actually very small, but this one in particular is crazy bad:

Now all that said, I tried to see how much detail a 1mm bit would provide, and it’s actually pretty good. This is not a VCarve, so no VBit, just clearing using endmills down to 1mm in size:

So, paint-then-pocket could also be a viable approach. The pocket could be very shallow, so that might reduce your cutting time.

[Diesel3368 (Jason Weischedel)]

Thanks, Michael. You made me realize I started with the wrong logo file! That was a .jpg that I simply imported and went right to work setting tool paths. I also have a much cleaner .svg file that imported much cleaner! Let me retry with that one later today and see how things are looking then.

The software does warn me that there are 4 open vectors and gives me an option to select them, but I can’t seem to identify them or do anythign about it.

On to figuring that out!

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

I walked through doing the shallow cut, painting, and then once dry finishing the cut at:

A technique for painting multi-colour files

Given a file: [image] If one re-draws geometry in-between the lines: [image] Then it may be assigned to a shallow No Offset Contour toolpath with an obtuse V endmill (90 degree was used): (the insets were simplified down to match the aggregate of each of the colour regions) [image] and then cut (my apologies, no picture) and painted: [20251013_1236501] Then, once painted, the V carve proper may be run: [20251013_1312021]

For finding the open vectors use Edit | Select | Select Open Vectors:

and as noted, you’ll want to address all instances of overlapping and self-intersecting geometry.

[mhotchin (Michael Hotchin)]

@Diesel3368

The software does warn me that there are 4 open vectors and gives me an option to select them, but I can’t seem to identify them or do anythign about it.

I was able to select the vectors and move them to another layer, but, like you, couldn’t do anything with them. I suspect they are individual nodes - I’ve seen other cases of ‘phantom nodes’. I would just select and delete them.

[SirGariff (Gary Clark)]

If I was creating this sign, this is how I would run it.

The Stable Few raised logo.c2d (672 KB)

Much easier to paint the surface of a raised image. Carve out the “white” with a 1/4" or 1/8" endmill, use a 30 degree vee bit to get nice sharp corners. Those who know me know I am partial to HDU. That is primarily because I know that it will stand the test of time. Wood has a tendency to age and I’ve not found an exterior clear finish that won’t need to be refinished every two or three years or so. If done like this, prime the whole sign, paint the white, then paint the raised logo. Go in with an artists brush at the end and do touch up on the white.

My 2 cents for the day

Please note, the feeds and speeds are for HDU, not for wood!

I took the image of the logo you posted and traced it in Carbide Create. It came out very clean. No overlapping vectors.