Jagged Letters Being Carved?

[NeathawkSigns]

Hello,
I recently carved a 3D sign, and there is text and a circle. See photo. This is sanded somewhat... When I carved this out all the letters are not crisp and straight/curved lines. In the file the nodes are perfect straight lines. No extra ones that would cause the jaggedness. I carved this one with an 1/8th in. ball nose. We are going to recarve using a 1/16th ball nose. But the rendering still shows that the circle and fonts will be someone jagged no matter if I increase or decrease the step over. Any suggestions?

Thanks! L

[myxpykalix]

A couple questions. Where did you get the baseball figure and the lettering?
If you just took a logo and traced a bitmap or scanned from a photo you might be getting remnants of the dpi (dots per inch) from the photo.

What is your stepover percentage set at?
Someone may suggest you are losing steps but you would have defects in the baseball player along with the text.

Did you create the text from within your program?

Go back to node editing and zoom in as far as you can go to see if you have some underlying nodes/lines you can't see.:eek:

[gc3]

carve the player and the background... pocket the letters with a profile pass last. carving letters always looks like that

[tlempicke]

True story - please don't kill the messenger.

We were having similar problems. Other times tabs would come out wrong or V carving not right.

Found out that the settings file had .121 for the thickness of the ZZero plate and it was actually .125. Fixed this - problems gone.

[butch]

I would look at a couple of things. First the step-over setting - get it under 10%. Another is the speed - might want to slow down the Inches per Second to around 1.5 or 2. I have had to do a clean up run around the outside of the letters to get them cleaned up. When I do that, I run a v-bit for a nice clean edge.

[butch]

True story - please don't kill the messenger.

We were having similar problems. Other times tabs would come out wrong or V carving not right.

Found out that the settings file had .121 for the thickness of the ZZero plate and it was actually .125. Fixed this - problems gone.

The ZZero plate may also be warped or uneven. I always do this if the Z must be dead on - I first Zero the Z to the top - take a piece of paper and lay down, then send the bit Z setting to zero. Then pull the paper - it should be stuck or cut as you pull it out. If not move the Z down/up until it just cuts/holds the paper and reset the Z zero. My setting is now around .134 for the zero plate - probably about time I get a new one.

[sneakers]

To fix the problem of the jagged edge around the text you must offset a boundary line outside the text 1/2 the thickness of the bit you are using to cut around the letters. What I see is the outline of the bit touching the letters and giving you that jagged edge. I hope this makes sence to you.

Gary

[jerry_stanek]

Check out this tutorial from Vectric it shows Gary was talking about

http://www.vectric.org/video/aspire3/2d_mach/b03-texturing-web/b03-texturing-web.wmv

[NeathawkSigns]

My Z plate is brand new. We just got our new ShopBot in July.

Butch:

My step over originally was at 10% w/ a 1/8th"Ballnose, I lost some of the detail of the player with that size, so I was going to recarve with a 1/16th"ballnose. What should I set my step over here? My spindle Speed is 12000rpm, feed is 200 in/min and plunge is 100in/min.


I know for a fact that their are no extra nodes floating around. I am using aspire to do all the cuts as a single 3D Finishing tool.

The total size of this is 14" in diameter. Does this help?

[bleeth]

cut your speed to 120ipm. Cut your plunge to 30ipm. 10% is pretty max. You may get the detail you need just by going to 5-7% with the 1/8".
Make sure you are selecting the arcs/inch postprocessor.
You will also stress your bit less if you run a roughing pass with a larger bit first. Maybe a 1/4 or 1/2" ballnose at 10% for a piece this size.

[NeathawkSigns]

Thank you David, I forgot to mention that I am carving out of Sign Foam (HDU). Does this matter? Also, I was going to try a 1/16th in ball nose instead of the 1/8th. Would you agree or should I stay with the 1/8th. L

[bleeth]

You will get less deflection from sign foam then hardwood but it can still affect your work. The smaller stepover helps with this as well as resulting in less "ridges" The choice of 1/8 or 1/16 has a lot to do with the ability to get into the tight spots of the relief and how long you can justify running the file. Small bit and small stepover yields pretty results but takes a lot longer to cut.
One person thinks a part looks great and another thinks it looks to rough!!

[gc3]

z zero plate is for depth not anything to do with a profile...you need to do a profile pass on the letters after you " carve " them.....to clean up the edges

[NeathawkSigns]

Dave- In the rendering w/ the 1/16th in Ball Nose the image looks MUCH crisper! It is saying it will take 11 hours... So I am playing with the speed to see how much faster I can go until the jaggedness comes back.

[adrianm]

Might be worth posting this over on the Vectric forum as it's Aspire being used. There is a crossover between users but there are a lot who don't come here.

[tlempicke]

My Z plate is brand new. We just got our new ShopBot in July.

Mine was too. Take a mic to you Z Zero plate and check the file. I think that possibly SB was using some aluminum that was sized in millimeters and that was why the file setting did not match the actual aluminum piece.