General Logo Comment for Programming

[charger19690]

So many of you may know this, but I didn't so I figured I would spread the knowledge...

I was tasked last week to program a logo into some test material at different depths and then we would powder coat them to see how it looks afterwards.

Well the logo the customer wanted was more of a 3D emboss, not really just engraving.

Well I jumped at the project, how fun being that we have Mastercam and it has an Art function.

After numerous attempts to use Art, I found that the Art side didn't work to well because from what understand Mastercam Art uses shading to define geometry and because the logo had beveled text, it didn't work to well, so I figured I would have to draw the likeness of the logo out by hand, which was quite a pain to think about....

Well I ran into a function in Adobe Illustrator that will export 2D geometry in a dwg format. That was the best thing in the world. I could bring the logo into Illustrator and spit out CAD geometry. So then I just used the 2D flat geometry to create extruded Solid of the text which I drafted the walls upon creation and BAM a prefect likeness to the logo.

FYI, Adobe Illustrator is just another tool for us machinists, who would have thought.

cncmike
http://www.cncbasics.com
http://www.cncbasicsforum.com

[WallyL7]

Thanks Mike!

That is super, and I am going to have to check it out. Nice work.

[timmydabull]

does it work better than the rast to vec function in Mastercam?

thank you

[charger19690]

"does it work better than the rast to vec function in Mastercam?"

I am not sure on the lingo, but I spent about 4 hours on MasterCam's Art trying to get this logo to convert and because of the Beveled style logo and color shading, MasterCam would not create clean geometry.

That's all I know is when I exported from Illustrator, I had nice clean 2d geometry of the logo from which I easily made a solid and beveled the edges to match the logo.

From 4 hours + in MasterCam with no success, to minutes with Illustrator then bringing it into MasterCam and creating the solid logo.

Maybe there is a better way, but I couldn't figure it out. I know when it comes to time equals money, I will do it this way every time in the future.

Mike in MN

http://www.cncbasics.com
http://www.cncbasicsforum.com
http://www.mastercamforum.com
http://www.mastercamblog.com