This was an interesting project. I've never done raised letters and I've never worked with brass. Two new things. Pretty rare these days.

I ran into an issue making raised letters. There is no toolpath that I could see that would make them. V-carve toolpath makes cut-in letters only. Maybe I missed something there. Pocketing out the background to leave a raised letters was the only thing that had possibilities but when I tried to go full depth with one tool path, this is what I got:

Stamp-Pocket-full.jpg

Obviously, not any good. So I tried just doing a bit at a time, in this case, 0.01" at a pass and creating a toolpath for each successive bite into the brass. I wanted to go down 0.07" so that led to seven tool paths. I combined them into a single path and ran the file. Here's the results in Aspire:

Stamp-Pocket-progressive.jpg

I used a 60 degree V-carve bit, one I had obtained from another SB'er who sent me bits to be sharpened and the result was this stamp:

Stamp.jpg

(2" wide, 1/2" thick bar stock "Machining" brass)

When heated with a torch and pressed into wood, this is how it looks:

Stamp-results.jpg

This was my first attempt and in the future, I'll roll it back and forth a bit to give it a more even depth. The worst part of the job was the smoke that came out of the wood and got in my eyes! Shouldn't have been standing directly over the darn thing. My bad there.

Question: Any better way of making raised letters with a V-carve bit?