Very excited to be part of this movement and can’t wait to get up and running with Maslow.
Can somebody give me an idea of what would be possible in terms of V-carving lettering or patterns?
All the maslow stuff I’ve seen so far has been straight flute type cut out work, so I was wondering if it would be possible to create ornate lettering using a V bit of some sort? is that a case of running some special software (Vectric V-Carve?) or are there some more open source ways of going about creating 3d carving textures (by 3d I mean 2.5d I guess)
thanks for humouring me and sorry if I’m asking something ridiculous!
I would guess V-carve is the gold standard in doing this. To find out if it is useful see if you can find another CNCer to generate a file for you with V-carve so you can try it out. Make it simple to start with so you can edit it in a regular text editor. ( Notepad++ is a favorite of mine on Windows, but then again I prefer vi on Linux … old geek here)
the maslow with a motorized Z axis should be able to do a wonderful job cutting
letters.
The trivial way to do this is to use a v-bit or ballnose and just cut the letter
shape, this is trivial to setup with just about any drafting/cad software. This
cuts the letters to the same depth everywhere.
the more sophisticated way will vary the bit height so that you can get the
fancy corners to the letters, and instead of the corners being rounded, it will
pull the v-bit up into the corners so that you get sharp edges and corners to
the letters.
The maslow will do this easily, it’s just a matter of finding the best CAD/CAM
software to create the g-code for the maslow to run.
The dirty secret of CNC machines is that the machines are relativly simple, all
the fancy stuff depends on the CAD/CAM layer that creates the g-code for the
machine to execute.
I wold suggest if you want to be able to adjust Kernning or letter shape to use a program like Illustrator, Corel Designer. There are free vector based programs that mimic them if money is an issue. Can’t recomend any of the free ones as i’ve never used them.
Once you have your design to your liking create outlines and Export as SVG.
This is a quit old pic of a testcut with a 90° v-bit I had collecting dust, made all at the same depth. The logo and the frame are my mistake creating an outline, instead of cutting on the line. Better engravings with a 45° bit use variable Z-hights to get nice pointy edges. If your Z-spindle works reliable you could try F-Engrave. http://www.scorchworks.com/Fengrave/fengrave.html
I’ve been mega busy with work for the last few weeks and looks like it won’t let up until October which I’m hoping is when the postman will finally unite me with my Maslow box…
