VCarve Door Profile

[Doug Harris]

Been a member for a long time and I have never posted a Question, so bear with me, please.
We have a Custom Cabinet Shop in Western NC. Lately we have been challenged to make some Different Items.
In this case we are reproducing a Door Profile from 1" MDF. Below is a Drawing of the Profile and my result, my problem is getting a Sharp inside corner with a 5/8" Ball Nose Bit. How do I V-Crave these corners, the profile is a Concave so the Corner Clear Bit must run a curved, concave cleaning pass? I have a Vortex 45.5 degree and a Amana 22 1/2 degree angle bits. Started to is a Tapered Ball Nose, 1/8" Tip?
We cut out lots of Radiused Parts and other items with V-Crave, but have not done much Carving.

Thanks,

[dealguy11]

You're not going to get a sharp corner with a 5/8" bit. If you really need a sharp corner you have 2 choices:

1. Cut the entire cove profile with a smaller bit, like a 1/8" tapered ballnose, using a moulding toolpath. This will take many minutes per door...perhaps 8-15 depending on your speeds.

2. Cut the majority of the cove profile with the 5/8" bit as you have done. Then clean up the corners with the 1/8" tapered ballnose and a moulding toolpath. You need to create a little L-shaped rail vector in each corner, with the vector direction running counter-clockwise. See the example. The L's in this are in the layer "Corners" and are only 0.01" on each side, and are on top of the "Frame" vector. This is still not really fast - each corner takes about 1-2 minutes to cut, but better than doing the entire profile.

[Doug Harris]

Thanks for the info, I thought a molding tool path was the answer, but I haven't tried to use that feature.
I do have an Egg and Dart molding to cut on my CNC. The bed is 10' long, which is handy.
I'll let you know how it works out.

Thanks again!

[sharkcutup]

Shooting for something like this model representation of a .3125 radius into a 1" thick door, right?

As previously noted --- not going to happen with a 5/8" diameter bit unless you do as noted below!

You could make individual segments (4) then marry the segmented parts together cutting 45 degree angles.

Or do as dealguy11 has mentioned.

Or create a model as I have done but carving time would then be humongous!

Sharkcutup

[dealguy11]

This is vcarve, so would have to create the model outside the software. As far as carving it, the finish on a 3d carving will be inferior to the finish from a moulding toolpath, and probably slower.

[sharkcutup]

Yup, good points.

I realize this is V-carve as I had created model outside of it in other software too.

And yes the moulding toolpath would be far better than 3D carving of model.

Again good points, thank you!

Sharkcutup

[dealguy11]

While replying to a PM on this I noticed there is an error in the file. The corners should be done with a 1/8 ballnose of course, and I had them set up with a 1/8" end mill. Here is a corrected file.