Been playing with my CNC OX and it seems to be going pretty good. Worked out a couple of bugs but happy, made a HELLO WORLD and a couple of name plates just playing with different fonts. I have been designing up a sign for my brother's BBQ area at his house, it's about 11x8 inches and when it goes to do the letters, I stated no offset and it cuts the letters and they start to blend together so you really can't make out some of the letters, I am using an 1/8 inch straight spiral bit. Now I am wondering about the offsets in the CAM program when doing toolpath and gcode. I have included a copy of my work I want to cut in PNG format Thanks in advance Steve aka Ampman
Is the 1/8" endmill wider than the lines of the letters by chance? That would cause them to get to close to each other.
Consider Vectric Products - OpenBuilds Part Store - V-Carving will be much better for a design like this
I've had some success with a program called F-Engrave. It is simple, and works quite well. The big issue is getting hold of decent single line / stroke fonts (truetype fonts are all based on a filled outline). F-engrave allows you to vary letter and word spacing as you like.
Being a dedicated Sketchup with SketchUcam user I would do this as 2 cuts. 1st op is a pocket with a small tool that fits inside the letters, to pocket out the letters. 2nd op is a V-bit that only cuts the outlines of the letters, to give a sloped side. An alternative is a Vbit with a large enough flat on the tip that it clears the interior of the letter while it is cutting outline of a pocket operation. One will have to play with the 'bit diameter' a bit to fool it into doing what you want. .
