confused about tiny incised lettering... "engraving fonts" ?

[iSign]

ok... I thought I had it... I got the phone number to run nicely by using a "router offfset" function with the "open contours" checkbox checked... until I saw that it would have skipped the dots, which were closed contours... so I kept those toolpathed as an "engrave" function... and it ran great... so I went to toolpath the entire message, but I got the warning "loops detected" and then I discovered that there were overlapping contours where a letter was perhaps designed to minimize tool lifts, by tracing back over a section to get to the next leg... but Enroute won't tolerate that (without some other setting i'm unaware of maybe)... so I was back to the drawing board... as there were too many "loops' for me to want to modify all the vector paths...

and then I opened up my original double line text paths & tried to toolpath it again, using the engrave function... and I suddenly snapped on the "3D engrave" checkbox... checked it, re-set my nice shallow depth, crossed my fingers...

well, it worked!!
I probably should have run this board through a planer, because although it looked nice and flat & smooth... I can see some depth variation... but I ran the top 2 lines a little deeper, and this is good enough for me, all things considered...

Now I'm running the hatch fill, so I couldn't bear to look.. I'm using a down spiral, so I think I've got a good chance of not splintering the wood... but I'm still nervous after the insane amount of trouble shooting hours I have in this measly $400 sign...

 

[iSign]

well, another mystery that has plagued me at random intervals has cost me a few vocal chord cells this evening... perfectly un-blemished vector contours, with an entirely normal toolpath display, will suddenly result in a bite being taken out of my letter. I ran just the "S" almost 10 times in tests... 2 times I got that bite, for unknown reasons... but once i made a few tweaks, my last 3 tests were perfect, so I focused on the engrave text... finally quit testing & moved on to the area on this piece of wood, where i need to get this sign done tonight, and now i have just phuqed up 6x10 worth of wood TWO damn times in a row... ...Thinking i will just mill down the piece to a thinner plaque... at least it will be planed flat then...

 

[GAC05]

Sounds like you are having a rough go of it tonight Doug.
Hope you get it worked out.
At least the next time you have to do this you will know what to expect (and avoid).

wayne k
guam usa

 

[iSign]

I hope so
I just revised the text in illustrator, with an inline to make it slightly less bold, giving more room for the tool to pass between the kerning, and creating entirely new vectors..

the slab has room for one last try before milling down to a thinner slab, so I'm running that test now...

 

[iSign]

arrrgghh
8:30 pm, and I haven't even had lunch..

3rd attempt... same glitch
(upside down pic... oh well, you get the idea...
the 4th "spot" has some nasty cracks I need to avoid)

time to get milling... maybe lock up & grab a bite to eat while it resurfaces this board...

 

[GB2]

Did you try anything with the pyramid tool path? Maybe with a negative depth? I think that might be the proper way to approach this but I'm not sure I've never used Enroute to do that type of incise carved prismatic lettering.

 

[iSign]

nope... never heard of that gary... but I sorta got that part working for the moment..
have you ever seen these unpredictable round bites out of the letter? It's at least a 1/4" diameter section of a circle crossing inside of where any tool path shows on my file... but I'm using an 1/8" bit... so it's going to a lot of effort to foul up my letters... not like it's just one stray little zip into the wood... it's cutting around in a circle that doesn't show up anywhere...

I just typeset new text & I'm testing it in the cracked area now... after milling down the board & putting some tung oil on the surface

 

[iSign]

plan was to see how much contrast just from the wood itself...
so for now, it's done...
good night!

 

[CES020]

I don't want to burst your bubble, and someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the areas you cut are going to turn the same color as the sign in the new future. Once they get exposed to air and UV light, I think the entire sign will be the same color. That might be perfectly okay, but I wouldn't promise the guy the contrast is going to stay like that.

It might not matter, but I thought I'd bring it up just in case it did matter.

 

[GB2]

I've never seen any little circle anomalies like you're experiencing but I've had my fair share of similar glitches. Usually they are related to faults in the font. If you look extremely close at the fonts, it's likely that you'll discover two points on top of each other in those areas, or something like that.

 

[V-ENGRAVE]

ISIGN - Sorry for all the problems you have encountered with this simple sign.

Is your machine equipped with nose cone attachment? With nose cone you can control the depth of those small letter to perfection rather the setting depth with Z axis in the software.