Odd behaviour when engraving.

Hi

I have been testing out my machine this week and doing some engraving using Fusion 360 and UCCNC. I started off with a 90 degree v bit and made a few name plaques for the kids and a couple of vector drawings. This all went fine and I was pleased with the results.
Today I tried some tiny 1/8th inch 30 degree cutters, the flat single edge ones. So first I just did a test just trying different sizes of font I went from 15mm high letters down to 1.5mm high. The cuts were very sharp indeed ( in american black walnut) and I could read down to the 2mm ones.

So I designed a sort of business card for some little off cuts. I did the toolpath 20000 rpm at 2000 mm/min posted it and ran it.
It looked fantastic, with super crisp lettering, then I noticed it had missed out 2 letters from my email address and one digit from my phone number. When I looked closely in UCCNC I could see it was missing in the toolpath there so checked 360 and sure enough it was not going into those missing letters.

I tried re-doing the toolpath but it was the same, missing two letter r`s and the number one. I can`t select the letters individually just the whole word or line so can`t correct this at the moment.
I changed the design a bit and the font and did another one, this time it missed out the letter h from the word telephone, nothing else.

Not sure what to do here, it can`t really be the font as the rest of the line in the same font and size is carving perfectly. Is there another way to select the engraving.

Another Fusion question is why sometimes in preview mode it shows me the 3d result of the cutting path and sometimes it doesn`t just shows the bit travelling but not the result, I don`t think it matters much but it is wierd. (probably one simple option to tick somewhere) .

Thanks

Ollie

I don't work in Fusion but there should be an option to convert the font to line and curve geometry.

To be honest - post to the Fusion forums - I've found them to be very good to review and resolve problems. Even with a £0 subscription.

Righto!

I will post to the Fusion forum and see what I get.

To be honest yesterday I downloaded a trial of Vcarve desktop and had a little play about with it.
Doing the same as what I did in Fusion was very quick and easy. I managed to load in some geometric patterns and generate toolpaths much easier than in Fusion too.

I am considering spending the £330 on it, the time it will probably save will pay for itself quite fast.
Fusion for 3d furniture and component design and Vcarve for engraving stuff quickly.

That doesn`t mean I don`t want to know how to do it in Fusion though because now its bugging me.

Ollie

This problem is fixed.

I went on the Fusion 360 forum and posted about the problem. A lady called Julia replied and suggested I send her my file for her to look at. i did send it and she replied the next day. It turns out that by changing the setting tolerance in the passes section of the engrave cam menu ( fourth tab from the left of the box ). It was set to 0.01 and when changed to 0.05 it works fine, the toolpath now covers all the letters and numbers.

I guess the lettering was so small that the tolerance was not allowing it to do certain cuts, I am thinking that it was more the closeness of the gaps between that was the issue. Anyway problem solved, I will now be aware of the importance of the tolerance tab.

I may still end up getting Vcarve desktop at some point. Its a case of right tool for the job I think, for more 2.5 d engraving type stuff it is just quicker to get it done on Vcarve.
Fusion is fantastic though for more complex 3d stuff you can`t beat it.

Ollie

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ollie78

This problem is fixed.

I went on the Fusion 360 forum and posted about the problem. A lady called Julia replied and suggested I send her my file for her to look at. i did send it and she replied the next day. It turns out that by changing the setting tolerance in the passes section of the engrave cam menu ( fourth tab from the left of the box ). It was set to 0.01 and when changed to 0.05 it works fine, the toolpath now covers all the letters and numbers.

I guess the lettering was so small that the tolerance was not allowing it to do certain cuts, I am thinking that it was more the closeness of the gaps between that was the issue. Anyway problem solved, I will now be aware of the importance of the tolerance tab.

I may still end up getting Vcarve desktop at some point. Its a case of right tool for the job I think, for more 2.5 d engraving type stuff it is just quicker to get it done on Vcarve.
Fusion is fantastic though for more complex 3d stuff you can`t beat it.

Ollie

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Thanks Ollie for coming back to the forum and letting us all learn from what you found out!

Plenty of times, people tend to simply disappear once their problem is solved, without even notifying those who have been attempting to help them.

Andy

Without this forum I don`t think my machine would be working at all.

Thought it should make good reference if someone else searches for it.

Ollie