V-Inlay for Stars ?

[ElevationCreations]

I am looking for any tips for the male portion of the V-Inlay for 5 point stars. We are having challenges with the points of the stars breaking off during machining which would be at the top of the inlaid material.

I have tried a few work-arounds to minimize the amount of material removed during the last pass of the V-bit, including pocketing the material around the male star inlay and v-carving the profile offset so only .005" is removed with the last pass of the V-bit.

We are using 60 degree 1/2" diameter V-bits.

We are having this challenge with Maple and Paduak, the size of the stars does not seem to make any difference or have a better result.

Thanks
Craig

[martin54]

Do the stars need to come to a sharp point ? Perhaps rounding the very end would help, I have done this a couple of times with sharp points & it has hardly been noticeable on the final job. I also run much slower feed rate on those sort of jobs which does increase machining time but does result in less chipping/breakage, other thing that seems to help is sealing the wood before carving, I use a spirit based shellac sanding sealer but if the carving is deep something else may be more suitable. Something that is going to penetrate deeper into the wood

[scottp55]

Craig,
As Martin said, it usually requires slower feeds, Especially the Plunge!
Slow Plunge WAY down so it's not grabbing a lot of wood suddenly.
Personally found that cutting the VCarve FIRST, and then the clearance path gives better results, as you're removing solid wood, and not cutting off of an already profiled shape.

Not stars, but Vivaldi Script font comes to very sharp narrow points in some letters.
scott