I would love to carve out my logo onto wood to make a sign to hang on the outside of my shop. I’ve been working on this in V-Carve Pro V 11.010 for awhile now this morning and I can’t seem to get the face details to show up enough. It could be that I didn’t convert the original jpg bitmap properly to vectors, but I’m looking for some help/suggestions to get a better looking end result.
Here is my original logo and what I have so far in V-Carve.
Looking forward to some help getting this all set up.
I traced your image in Adobe Illustrator and replaced the text manually if you’d like to try this file instead of doing it in Vcarve. It’s an SVG — paths only.
You are amazing!! This is what I’m looking for! The only issue is that I have a 60 and 90 VBit but no 30. I can order one if it will help make it look even better.
I’m looking to make a sign about 24x24” or so in size and then some smaller stuff using the same logo.
I’m assuming that eventually I will need to get the laser add on if I ever want to add this logo to the back of my work at a small size like 3x3”?
The biggest difference in the various V-bits will be the depth of cut on fine details.
If you are planning to leave the sign as raw or finished wood, then you must rely on shadows to accent the fine details. A deeper carve will create better shadows and make features stand out more.
If you are going to mask the sign and paint the background, this is less important since the paint color will accent the carve.
For 3x3", I’d agree a laser is preferable. It’s not necessarily impossible with a V-bit, but you may have some gnarly areas from the V-bit stepover, and it would be easy to sand away fine details later.
Ok, I see what you’re saying. Well I’d love to grab the file from you and set it up/run it. If you’d like some sort of payment for your payment time, just let me know.
No payment necessary, but thanks. You can download the SVG (vector) file I added in my first post and import it directly into VCarve.
Or, I’ll see if I can upload a VCarve CRV file here for you. But you’ll still have to play with the tools and sizing to get everything the way you want, and to select tools you have.
Trevor, make sure when you go to do the carve, that the big 24x24 is flattened first. With finer detail cuts I find the results will can be significantly different even with a slight bow/cup in what I can only assume will be some form of Glue-up to get that size. And agree with Matti… if you are doing a mask and paint the 60 should be more than adequate. I used a 90 on a 2x2 school logo of a road runner a week or two ago and lost a good amount of detail, but it was good for the customer needs so we stayed with the prototype. I have the laser, but the wanted the relief carving look.
Thanks again for the file! I was able to download it and open in VCarve. Right now, it says it’s going to take over 8hrs total to carve this at 24x24”. Does that seem long or about right?
That’s good to hear Dean! I’m still trying to decide what material would be best for this job. It’s going to be an outdoor sign that either hangs on the outside of my shop or on a mount in the front yard. The job itself is saying that it’s going to take 8 hours. Does that seem long to you?
whether you have selected appropriate clearance tools to hog out the larger areas (V-bit stepover takes forever — use an endmill for clearance)
your tool settings (feed rate, pass depth, stepover, etc.)
additional program settings (safe-z height, travel rate when not cutting, etc.)
max cutting/carve depth for this project (if multiple passes are required on deeper areas)
overall project dimensions
whether you have calibrated your times in VCarve to your machine
and so on…
All that said, with the use of a 1/4" clearance tool (Whiteside RU2100) and a 30° V-bit (Amana 45771), I’m showing closer to 2 hours on my end. But I also don’t know what you have changed, or what tool settings did or didn’t transfer over with the file.
Adding an additional 1/8" clearance tool to reduce the amount of V-bit stepover in nooks and crannies may also produce better results overall. But that’s up to you.
I tried to attach the .crv file here but it says that it’s larger than the 8mb allowance. Can I email it to you or try another alternative?
Just an FYI. The file is shown as is with me swapping out the generic bits you had for ones that I have. I didn’t change any tool settings though (left everything as default). I’m not educated enough on all of this yet to be able to know what I can / can’t change to speed up the job without sacrificing details.
With that being said, I would love to know more about what I can change in this file to drastically reduce the carve time. Maybe once you’ve had a look at the file, you can let me know what to change. I don’t want to take up too much of your time though so just let me know if I’m being a pain in the ass!
Unfortunately, I think you just confirmed that locally added tools are not saved to the VCarve file as I did not have generic bits selected except for the 1/8" bit, which I only added to improve the preview. But I can still take a look to see what it gives me.
It’s pretty amazing how a few small numbers can make such drastic changes. Here is a comparison with my settings for that tool, which I just ran on another project.
I think you are capable of doing the carve (V-bit) portion in 2 passes instead of 3 (.125" doc) if not even a single pass, and the 40% clearance pass stepover is a huge time sink. For a bit like this, I would rather spend a few minutes hand sanding any rough spots post carve than add an extra 4.5+ hours of machine time.
Wow!! See this is what I want to learn as time goes by so that I can do more jobs like this one and not have to wait all day for it to finish. I’m so new to CNC that all of this is just starting to make some sense. I haven’t touched any of the default settings as I didn’t want to mess something up.
Being a professional photographer by trade now for over 20 years, I feel like I know my craft and editing programs quite well. It’s funny how diving into a new venture is like starting all over again! Lol
So would you say that the highlighted area is the biggest gain in time or should I be tweaking any of the other bit settings as well?
On a side note. If you are ever have some time and want to see my work, you can check it out at www.trevorpottelberg.com.
