Chicago Edgelit

An area to upload images of pieces cut using VCarve Pro
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dwilli9013
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Chicago Edgelit

Post by dwilli9013 »

Latest Edgelit.
Material 3/8 Extruded Acrylic (Cast is next)
Engraved with 60° Diamond Drag Bit.
.002 stepover with .2 DOC at 150 IPM
The lighting is temporary as this is my test rig set up in my shop. This will have a base made with a USB cord to power off of any computer or wall adapter.
Still need to cut the border line on the band saw sand and flame polish the edges.
And best of all I remembered to mirror the image the second time. :oops:
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CHITOWN.jpg
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Dwayne
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highpockets
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by highpockets »

Nice job Dwayne, I've yet to try engraving on acrylic. More information on your settings would be appreciated.
John
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scovell
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by scovell »

That turned out great, the lighting is prefect.

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dwilli9013
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by dwilli9013 »

HighPockets
All of my settings have been derived from Dougs (XxRay) posts. In one of his posts I read that he had tested through quite a few DOC settings and it seemed to come down to 0.200 being the optimal setting.
The attached clip is from my particular Drag Bit setup. Up to this point it has been quite a bit of trial & Error. I can tell you from experience Acrylic is definitely the way to go. Several I tried in Lexan just looked nasty and are a bear to clean up.
I will keep posting as I start doing some depth cut edgelits. I just really like the looks of them.

Scovell,
Thank you.
My test rig lighting is actually an emergency exit sign that I hacked to use as a bench test rig for edgelits. Just haven't gotten around to hacking the chip to turn the led's back to white. :)
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Drag.PNG
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martin54
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by martin54 »

Least you have put the lexan to one side :lol: :lol:

Cast will be better & there is almost no difference in price between cast & extruded now, when I started signmaking there was quite a big difference between the two :lol: :lol:

Looks like it turned out well though, keep up the good work :lol: :lol:

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dwilli9013
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by dwilli9013 »

Martin,

Least you have put the lexan to one side

Yes I finally did. Took the advice of a friend who gave me a little nudge in the right direction. :wink: :D :D
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Xxray
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by Xxray »

Hey you spelled Chicago wrong !

Joking, looks like a nice clean cut, sometimes fills can leave streaks but yours looks nice.
Doug

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adze_cnc
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by adze_cnc »

DOC settings and it seemed to come down to 0.200 being the optimal setting.
Yet, in your image the "depth / pressure setting" is 0.006. Quite a difference. The "safe z" is 0.2 though. Are you using DOC to mean "depth of cut"?

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FixitMike
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Re: Chicago Edgelit

Post by FixitMike »

I ran a test using different pressures/depth of cut with a drag tool on cast acrylic. It was difficult to see any difference between the different values.
Drag tool test (2).JPG
I believe the difference in appearance of the bottom row is because that is closest to the edge lighting LEDs.
Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgement.

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