Need help with texturing pockets

[Rick Reese]

I 'm in need of some suggestions on tool-pathing a texture at the bottom of a pocket. The texture needs to blend into the radius at the botttom of the pocket without the tool touching the edges of the pocket and spoiling the textured effect.

I first started these doors on a much smaller CNC Shark and was forced to fab the doors from numerous pieces. Since I was doing the door panels one at a time, this problem never came up.

The plan with the Bot is to do all of the machining after the full-sized door blank is glued up. I've got eleven more of these to complete. The photos show the textured effect I'm trying to acheive. I need the texture to appear to fade into the edges of the pocket. I'm using Aspire to generate the tool paths. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Rick Reese
Shelton, WA

[bleeth]

Nice doors Reese.
If you are doing your texture as a relief with a ball nose bit then you need to set the limit of the toolpath a little more than the radius of the bit. So if you are using a 1/8 bit (.125), you would draw a vector maybe .128 inside the true location of where the panel is. That's about the closest you can get without hitting your stiles and rails with the bit.Then for your toolpath select the cut within vectors option.

[srwtlc]

If you're using the 'Texturing' toolpath in Aspire, use the 'Boundary Vector Offset' field and set it to at least tool radius. Your set up will need to be dead on along with the size of your frame openings to keep from hitting the sides. Setting it a bit higher to allow for some variation may be needed.

I don't think it would look as nice as what you have there though. A preview will show it well.

[Rick Reese]

Thanks for the tips. I'll give it a try this weekend on a few test pockets.


Rick

[gc3]

built a lot of doors...with and without cnc panels. only going to take a very small mistake to create another piece for your wall of shame (mistakes)...i think you'd be far smarter to machine panels as parts then assemble door...but hey, what do i know???

[srwtlc]

another piece for your wall of shame

Hey, I got one of those. Add another piece once in a while. Nothing serious, thank goodness.