Whenever I use “carve” in estlcam it doesn’t carve all the way to the edge of the shape. Does anyone know how to do that? I uploaded a screenshot of a simple preview of my code.
The preview is showing the center of the path, your carve tool flares outwards at whatever angle. When actually cut the dims should be right on.
Maybe my problem is that I am using a ball end mill. When I did a sample cut it didn’t cut to the edges.
Carve is for a V-bit only.
What are you trying to do, typically a ball end is for 3D sculpting. Most the time you should be using a some form of square end mill.
Yeah, switch to a flat bottom but for this shape, and use hole, then hit pocket.
Thanks guys. I was mainly just trying to carve a simple topography before I ran an extensive program, but I’ll go ahead and order some v-bits from the site.
I think you are using the wrong terms.
Can you show an example of what you are trying to do?
This is a carve, notice the sharp corners and variable depth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_O9fbzjSn8
Am planning on doing something like this: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/white-paper-topography-relief-abstract-cut-710300899
So I was going to carve each layer individually.
We don’t call that a carve. If you are going to do it out of several pieces of wood it is just use the hole menu, if it was one piece of wood with different depths use the hole menu to make different depth pockets.
Carve is for sharp edged designs where depth does not matter, hole is inside the lines, part is outside the lines.
You can hover over the commands in estlcam and it gives a description.
I would do that with hole/pocket, with each pass going deeper.
If you need around with starting depth, the final depth is the starting depth plus the depth.
So if you make the widest section to a depth of 3mm, the next largest will be starting depth of 3mm, and a depth of 3mm, will be 6mm from the original start depth. The next section will be starting at 6mm, depth of 3mm, for a total of 9mm.
You might not need that advice, but I buried a bit because I didn’t know that.
I still want to make one of those mostly full sized. The real one is almost 12 feet in diameter though.
I’ve seen quite a few quarters, and never one that big.
Thanks guys, sorry for the confusion. What would be the preferred bit for pockets?
Standard flat end, end mills.