Has figured out how to get Estlcam to honor adjacent cut paths? You can see in the image I’m using an 1/8 inch bit to rough in around these letters. There are two distinct errors. 1) the “s” and “h” tool paths overlap and cut into the adjacent character. 2) the bottom of the “h” is cut through on the originally path.
I’ve tried grouping and creating a pocket with these as islands. Automatic tool paths does the same. My end goal is to create a pocket with these as islands with a 1/8 rough pass and 1/16 finishing pass. Using the 1/16 fits between the letters correctly, but clips the inner serif on the “h” and the “s”.
I ended up using carve with a 60 deg bit and the 1/8 bit to rough - which worked correctly from a tool path perspective, but lead to a lot of other problems in the finished product due (an aluminum sign - that can be a separate post )
The only way I’ve found to deal with that is to carve the whole thing with a steep v-bit (30-deg), carving the outside of the letters similar to a part like you have done and doing an inner carve on a frame around the whole piece. Choose the end mill as the carve pocketing tool and a really large maximum carve width. Really large. It will clear out the small sections that the end mill can’t reach with the v-bit.
But I’ve only done this on wood so there’s that…
Yeah, that’s essentially what I did. This is my first real experiment with aluminum. Endmills are cutting fantastic, having a lot of trouble with the v-bits. I think that’s partly a speeds and feeds issue on my part, but possibly also the way Estlcam is creating the cuts. Need to go run a few experiments .
Regardless, it would be a nice feature if Estlcam could merge these paths and treat as one continuous object. There are times where I don’t care if it clips an object because it is so nominal, but with a string of text it is really obvious.
The Create Objects Automatically function and tweaking bit and/or font sizes is so much easier, but point to point manual shape detection is an option. I would start with auto paths because seeing where the paths cross over one another is a real help when setting point to point paths - right click to create a path along the green line/shape, left to create a path between any two points.
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