Changing the thickness of an .stl file?

I have a file that i love and i want to carve it on a product. the file thickness is .473 in height or as i think of it as thickness but my material is only .5 inches thick. Can i reduce the thickness of the model in some way and not lose details or is that not possible. If it is possible can you tell me how to do it? by th way I am using vcarve pro.

Generally yes although how to do so will depend on specifics as well as your software.

For the lowest effort and lowest cost (free) answer I can imagine, go to “tinkercad”, a free and very basic boolean 3d design program that is entirely online. Upload your stl and “squish” the dimensions down to 0.473, then export the stl.

There is a good likelihood that whatever software you are doing your cnc work with will also have a provision for this, but tinkercad is made for children and actually is perfectly competent at simple changes like you need. Tinkercad is a product developed by the same designers as fusion 360 and meant to be a very simple and intuitive 3d design workspace, and as long as you are okay with direct modeling vs parametric (and sounds like you are here) it can be good for lots of quick and dirty fixes.

When you import a model it asks you to scale it. You can do it then. Or if you have already imported it, go to the component Properties for it and change the Shape Height.

thank you everyone that helped me with this. thank you all. I am considering the “learn your cnc course” for vetrics software. has anyone here tried it? did you learn a lot? did it help you with your projects? is it worth it? i want to know every dialog box in Vetrics what it does and why i want to know what to do not guess.

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once again thank you all for the help you provide. I have since decided to get the learn your cnc course and am progressing through it . It seems very thorough. i have learned a few things even in the first few lessons. so far well worth the money but I am only 118 minutes in, I have a long way to go, but I will keep you posted. I want to know everything about vetrics vcarve that there is to know. LOL

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The way I read your question… .5 material and .473 model thickness.
You should not have a problem, with ,027 of material left. That is a little less than 1/32nd.
Then again am looking at it from a standpoint of a 3d carve.
Everything I have learned about Vectric was from utube. Anytime I ran into a issue there was an video to let me see the correct way. But I also learn best by trial and error.

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