Controlling bit depth, another newbie question

[Barry Anderson]

I am attempting to carve a scripture verse in wood for a friend at church. Set it up using a 60* bit. In the tool database, it has .200 as the pass depth.
When I ran the program on a scrap piece to test, some of the letters did not cut completely. When looking at the toolpath list, and placing the cursor on the toolpath, it says that the maximum depth is .1104. How do I increase the depth of the cut? As always, thanks for helping a new user out.

H. Barry Anderson

[tonydude]

Under your toolpaths you put a check mark at the flat depth to control the depth of cut and put in a number for how deep you want to carve. look at attachment

Tony

[KWiK]

That .1104 is as deep as the V bit can go without going wider than your selected lines or font. So if you want it deeper, you will have to enlarge the font so that it is wide enough to allow the bit to go that deep.

[Barry Anderson]

Under your toolpaths you put a check mark at the flat depth to control the depth of cut and put in a number for how deep you want to carve. look at attachment

Tony

I did that on one test that I did and it had a flat depth in the bottom and not the 'v'. I guess more experimenting is the key to learning.
Thanks
Barry

[Barry Anderson]

That .1104 is as deep as the V bit can go without going wider than your selected lines or font. So if you want it deeper, you will have to enlarge the font so that it is wide enough to allow the bit to go that deep.

Will try that as well. Guess I will have to try and balance the font without getting the board to large.

Thanks
Barry

[scottp55]

VCarve doesn't "Color outside the lines":)
Use a steeper angle VBit(perhaps copy your vbit and try 30,45,60 degree angles to see which are most usable for you)/ check the "Bold"option/or use a different font(there are massive differences between fonts)/perhaps use the single line fonts and set your depth(but styles are limited and doesn't leave "Sharp" corners).
Lot's of options, but takes time,playing, and tutorials
Searching Forum helps a lot!
scott

[zeeway]

Another thing to keep in mind, is that you want to make sure your table is level and that the thickness of your material is uniform. If either one varies, it can affect the width of a v-carved line.

Angie

[martin54]

If you want the letters to have a "V" shape & not have a flat bottom anywhere then you need to play about a bit with a variety of different things. Since vcarving is based on the width between vectors there are a number of things you can do if you want to carve deeper or even shallower. Firstly changing the bit angle will will affect how deep you carve so a 30 deg bit will carve deeper than a 60 which will carve deeper than a 90 deg.
Secondly as we are talking about text the size you set the text at will make a difference so the larger the characters the deeper it will carve, of course it is not always practical to alter the text size so a third option would be to look at using a different font for the project.
Have a play about using different fonts, sizes etc & then preview the different results. One of the things I like about the software is that the preview is very very accurate so you can get a good idea how your project will look before you go using any materials what so ever.

[Barry Anderson]

Thanks for all of the advice. I am going to do some test using different fonts and the 60* and 90* bit that I have. This forum and the folks on it are a tremendous help for me. It appears that when I bought a CNC machine, I also joined a "family". Thanks for letting me in.

H. Barry Anderson