create and mill embossed letters

[CharlesM479]

I have been working through the Solidworks tutorials this week and I think I am getting the hang of it. I have also been learning BobCad. I started out importing Autocad drawings into Bobcad and generating Gcode for my mill. I have done a couple of parts without much trouble.

This afternoon my boss asked me to create an embossed machine plate out of aluminum. He had a 2D sketch that he made in Autocad. My first thought is no problem. After I opened the drawing I find that the letters are pushed together and some of them are touching. What he would like is to engrave all the lines on the letters and emboss all that can be removed.

So how do I do this?

My thought is to bring the 2D Autocad drawing into Solidworks and make it 3D. I think I can do this but I am a little unsure how to do the engrave part of the letters. I am thinking just cut a slow the size of the smallest endmill that I have. Any suggestions?

The next part of my plan is to bring the 3D into BobCad and generate the GCode. I have some to learn here as well. All I have done so far is cutting cams out of flat plate. I have not done 3 axis milling at all. Any suggestions or tips would help.

I guess my real question is am I going about this correctly?

[Cammotion]

Charles,

If I understand you correctly, you want an aluminum rectangle with your letters (or design) raised off it? If that's the case, you could draw the rectangle around your boss's sketch, and make the rectangle a pocket, with the sketch as islands. No need for 3D, unless you just want to draw it up for the practice.

[KKutt]

Can put the drawing in a soliworks sketch... File new part/ sketch(select plane). (copy and paste the drawing on the sketch and move to desired position) select the main body outline and then extrude boss base, set extrusion height -ENTER. go back to the sketch(edit sketch) then select the text, go to extrude boss base again, set your text height height, enter- and you should have a solid model of what you want. and export to your cam program>>>>>> hope this helps.

[KKutt]

If the letters are too close togather you may be able to move them apart so your tool will have clearance. (If the part will allow it.) I have ran into this problem of small corner radiuses and sometimes its better to just re create the text in a more friendly size and font. Even drafting the sides of the font and cutting with a 60 deg engraving tool to get more ridgidity and cutting speed. the sharp corner radiuses may not allow this if the text is too tall.
Wish you luck and hope you are not programming in Esprit, its not very text friendly and when you ask for support they get really quiet. Hope this rambleing is of some help.

Good luck Gary

[DareBee]

You mention that your bosses ACad drawing has some of the text running together, which sounds undesirable.
Unless he has wrote a novel it is extremely quick to do text sketches in Solidworks.
Extrude your rectangular plate
Insert sketch on top.
Insert sketch entitities text.
You can really custimize your text to make it easier to machine, such as extra space between letters and you can pick a text that is nice and open as well.

As far as CAM goes (I don't know about BCC) you should be able to 2.5d mill the regions as islands just as stated above.

[CharlesM479]

Thanks for the help and suggestions. I've not had much luck so far. I first took the text into BobCad and I learned how to do pockets and islands. Thats when I found out that the fonts had holes in them and were not fully connected. At first I fixed some but could not find them all. So I took them into SolidWorks and had the same problem trying to extrude them. So I backed up and created new text in BobCad with a good font and got the pocket milling to work. So I took that to my mill for a test run. My control is an old Delta Dynapath 20. I quickly found out that it was taking a long time to download. I got to looking and I had 12000 lines. After about 30 minutes of downloading the mill stopped responding to the computer. So Im stuck again. I'm thinking I will try to just cut the letters. This should cut down on my tool path and make my program smaller.

[DareBee]

You likely ran out of memory on the Dyna.
You should be able to DNC the program to cut it.
Increase your stepover and stepdown will also greatly reduce program size.

[CharlesM479]

You likely ran out of memory on the Dyna.

Thats what I think to. I ended up just dumping what I have and started new in solidworks. When I got what I wanted I sent it out to a local shop to have it cut out.

After just a couple of weeks of working with solidworks I must say I love it. I did a small weldment base this afternoon. It was my first assembly on my own. I had a little trouble with the mates but im getting the hang of it.

[DareBee]

If you are doing weldments with structural steel. I hope you have used the "Weldment" functionality, it is REALLY wonderful.

I setup custom profiles of Aluminum extrusion (MiniTec, 8020, etc) and use them in the "Weldment" function as well.

Automatic prints and cutlists.

I can't say enough about this feature, it saves MANY hours during the original modeling and during shop-print creation.