Help with making a solids letter

[lockeyone]

Would anyone care to tell me how to create these letters in 3D? What I mean is I wish to cut each letter individually on my router to be placed on a sign board. Kinda like the convex embossing with Bobart but on single letters. I tried the emboss feature with machining to borders but I am not quite getting the effect I want. How about a solid? Solids I have little to no practice at. I tried doing the letter j in solids but it never came out quite right.
Thanks.

[jstern429]

Not sure what type of letter you want to end up with. Do you want a straight side with a flat top or are you looking for a round top letter? I am assuming that you want to end up with seperat letters to put on to another board to creat the sign. Jeff

[LOKI]

I've imported your dxf to my solid modeller. Units are in millimeters, the height of the letters is at present 0.50mm. and the vertical faces have a 5 degrees draft angle. It would be interesting to know wich kind of "profile" do you want to give to your letters. (At present as i stated before, the profile is a straight line deviated 5 degrees from the vertical)...well....

[lockeyone]

Thanks, I was hoping for rounded tops for that smooth finish. I am hoping you give me an idea how I go about it in Bobcad. The 2 softwares I have are Bobcad and VCarve Pro.

[jstern429]

From the two software titles you have the V-Carve I dont think will cut a round top letter, it only does V shaped letters. The Bobcad states that it will do 3D tool paths, but how to do it I dont know. It may be a call to tech support if it isnt in the manual. I design in Corel 12 and do my tool paths in an older version of ArtCam Pro which will produce the round top letter, but there again I am new to the software and havent gotten to that yet. I would say that the BobCad would be your best bet to get the tool path you want. Jeff

[LOKI]

I do not know the BobCad-Cam, but having taken a look to their site, it seems that this software is capable of doing the work you want to do. I´ve seen that for example one of the new features of this soft is "surface extrude". If you make a planar surface delimited with your already drawn dxf curves. then you are going to be able to extrude this surface (also with a taper angle). The second step would be to fillet (give a round shape) to the upper edges. Also using "solid modelling" features wil be another way of getting the expected shape (extrude, draft, round or fillet, etc.) All that, related to modeling the letters in 3D.
An other thing is to prepare the toolpath for your router. Once again, it depends on the different tools your software offers. I imagine that the BobCam has procedures like "contour milling", or "surface milling", and I'm also sure that all of this procedures have more than 1 option that you have to setup like, z step, side step, feed rate, climb or not, cw spiral cut or ccw...well ... you should take a look to the examples they show in their website, and investigate a bit if there is any procedure close to your desired one. Regards, Alex

[tjones]

Bobcad solids machining gives all the options you would need to do this. Select the solid you wish to machine then go to the solids menu and select 'generate toolpath'.

I also would recomend getting Sorin's video tutorials. (free) They will help you with some example cuts.

Go to www.cadcamtrainer.com/forums/index.php Signup there and after you complete the registration (email that you will recieve) you will have access to the free vidoes.

[lockeyone]

This answer did not help me. I have seen Sorins videos, I have been on his site. The last question I asked there I never did get answer to my question. Several people saying that it was a easy and a piece of cake but no answers to help me do it in BC. I have tried in BC Solids to give the top edge a radius/filet and it won't let me do it. I can come up with taper sides like in the previous post but that seems to be as far as I can get.

[tjones]

I think the problem is not that noone could or would help but did not understand what you are actually wanting. Even a Bobcad employee helped but not enough information to understand there was still an issue. (remember most people on these forums are users just like you)

So you are trying to add a corner radius to a solid part? What happens when you use the fillet feature? Do you get an error? What error do you get?

Bobcad (along with many other cad programs) have a difficult time adding a radius to very sharp corners. These knife like edges may not be filleted because the fillet removes the top surface. Try a very small fillet for a test first.

[lockeyone]

"Error? Fillet failed. Make sure radius is not too large."
I tried many sizes with nothing. .01, .001, .1 all give me the same message.
Attached is the file I was playing with. I am just going after some kind of smoother top surface/radius. If you were to take this 2D drawing and emboss in BobArt it would give you a nice rounded top to the letter. I want to be able to cut each letter individually and hand space it onto a sign board.

I rewatched the Bobcad videos and Sorins and it says I should be able to do this. But not so far.

[tjones]

Yes the problem is in the form. There are areas that have small (almost to nothing) areas that will not allow much of any radius. The first letter did allow me to place a .001 radius on the edge.

The picture is zoomed on one of the corners where you can see what will happen to a fillet.

The second picture shows what a .03" radius size is compaired to the corner hump.