Some recent lettering work

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
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I wanted to share some recent work I did on my MPCNC…I was having a hard time feeling like I could get clean lettering, and figured out some things…

  1. I used a 60 degree 1/8 inch bit…this did a lot better for small shallow letters vs the 45 degree I was trying

  2. .2 to .4mm depth was plenty if the wood was stained…just enough to show the contrast. I started with 3-4mm and wasn’t having great results. Even 1mm with thin letters seemed excessive. However if it’s a script type font and gets super thin you may need to go .6 to get it to carve through

  3. 3% stepover gave me a world of difference vs 5%…and both were MUCH better than the 20% I started with. For Vbits I’m finding super low step over works great

 

  1. staining or spray painting the board before carving produces a great effect. I also tried spray paint after and then sanding to distress it. They all look cool in my opinion

  2. a cheap set of wood carving tools from a hobby store work great for cleanup…you can see in the bottom picture that the name (Russel Wilson) didn’t come out clean. I had to scrape/carve it in with the carving tools. I also lightly sanded the edges of the strands that came up

  3. Birch from a hobby store carves a bit messy. I had a lot of stranding. Pine seems to carve much cleaner.

Anyway hope that’s helpful to someone! I included my ESTLCAM settings in case that’s helpful as well. I’m on a 24x24x6 inch MPCNC. I’m also stoked that I can feel confident about carving text now!

Next up…3D carves…

 

 

 

 

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4 Likes
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Nice. I love that you are systematically trying things…and sharing your findings.

3D carving is very similar to the vcarve. Low step over and bam, nice finish. You should now be able to use the tool settings to set a high step over for roughing and a really low step over for finishing and get great results much faster. Before we had to use low step over the whole time and that gets to be a really long job.

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Awesome post man, thanks!

4

Those are some great tips!

One that I was playing with was putting masking tape over the board before carving.

Once carved, I could then spray paint the board to hit all the letters.

Pulling the tape off then left a nice crisp edge on the painted lettering.

1 Like
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Masking tape will work but depends on how “sticky” it is

6

I used masking tape on my last sign mostly so I could mark out the cut area and zero position. For the most part it worked, but on a couple letters it pulled up larger chunks than just what was cut.

7

Maybe it depends on the type used. I typically buy the blue painter’s tape. It seems to be pretty thin and more ‘paper-y’.